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6 episodes with Major Lance
4 episodes with Major Lance
4 episodes with Major Lance
2 episodes with Major Lance
2 episodes with Major Lance
3 episodes with Major Lance
3 episodes with Major Lance
2 episodes with Major Lance
2 episodes with Major Lance
This week, Chris features tunes from George Benson, Lost Family, Lee Moses and Major Lance, plus a Top 7 from well known DJ Mick H.For more info and tracklisting, visit: https://thefaceradio.com/dab-of-soul/Tune into new broadcasts of Dab Of Soul every Tuesday from Midday - 2 PM EST / 5 - 7 PM GMT.//Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
We've got two packed hours of 1960s party music for your 45 rpm vinyl radio dance party! You'll hear soul belters, R&B shakers, popcorn beat, jazzy movers, and more by The Broadways, Major Lance, Kim Tolliver, Shirley Ellis, lesser-known dancers from famous names like Wilson Pickett, Fats Domino, and Chubby Checker, and some fantastic steppers and shuffles from the Tams, Gene Allison, Dean Parrish, and more. Plus, we're still working on our new segment featuring stuff we dig, tentatively called "Stuff We Dig"!For more info and tracklisting, visit: https://thefaceradio.com/that-driving-beat/Tune into new broadcasts of That Driving Beat, Tuesdays from 8- 10 PM EST / 1 - 3 AM GMT (Wednesday)//Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
We've got two packed hours of 1960s party music for your 45 rpm vinyl radio dance party! You'll hear soul belters, R&B shakers, popcorn beat, jazzy movers, and more by The Broadways, Major Lance, Kim Tolliver, Shirley Ellis, lesser-known dancers from famous names like Wilson Pickett, Fats Domino, and Chubby Checker, and some fantastic steppers and shuffles from the Tams, Gene Allison, Dean Parrish, and more. Plus, we're still working on our new segment featuring stuff we dig, tentatively called "Stuff We Dig"! -Originally broadcast January 19, 2025- Willie Mitchell / That Driving BeatThe Trensations / Soulin' And Rollin'Dobie Gray / Out On The FloorMary Johnson / Hard Forgetting MemoriesBob Kayli / Tie Me TightEd Bruce / The Greatest ManBaby Washington / Leave Me AloneThe Broadways / You Just Don't KnowThe Du-Ettes / Every Beat Of My HeartMitty Collier / Ain't That LoveKim Tolliver / Get A Little SoulJennell Hawkins / Money (That's What I Want)Spinners / Heebie Jeebie'sGladys Knight and the Pips / OperatorDamita Jo / Keep Your Hands Off Of HimThe Capitols / Ain't That TerribleJ.J. Jackson / Boogaloo BabyKim Melvin / Doin' the PopcornWilson Pickett / Let Me Be Your BoyFats Domino / Work My Way Up SteadyChubby Checker / (At the) DiscothequeStevie Wonder / High Heel SneakersShirley Ellis / Birds, Bees, Cupids and BowsBuddy Rich Orchestra / The Beat Goes OnPaul Kelly / Chills and FeverThe Intrigues / In a MomentRonnie Love / Chills And FeverThe Tams / Untie MeThe Showmen / Our Love Will GrowRodger Collins / She's Looking GoodMajor Lance / You Don't Want Me No MoreGene Allison / Walkin' In The ParkDean Parrish / Bricks, Broken Bottles and SticksDella Rae / Hurry Up SummerChristine Quaite / In The Middle of The FloorThe Olympics / Everybody Likes to Cha Cha ChaWanda Jackson / WhirlpoolLittle Johnny Taylor / Somewhere Down the Line Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Retrocedemos sesenta años en el tiempo en busca de singles que alcanzaron su puesto más alto en el Billboard Hot 100 de EEUU en diciembre de 1964. Cuatro nombres se reparten el top 1 en las cuatro semanas del mes. The Zombies se unen a las bandas de la Invasión Británica.Los girl groups y el soul se mantienen como estilos en alza. Beach Boys y Jan and Dean resisten con el sonido de la Costa Oeste y aparecen The Gestures como una de las primeras bandas de garaje que se cuela en las listas de éxitos.(Foto del podcast; The Zombies en 1964)Playlist;(sintonía) TRAVIS WAMMACK “Scratchy” (top 80)LORNE GREENE “Ringo” (top 1)BOBBY VINTON “Mr lonely” (top 1)THE SUPREMES “Come see about me” (top 1)THE BEATLES “I feel fine” (top 1)THE ZOMBIES “She’s not there” (top 2)THE ROLLING STONES “Time is on my side” (top 6)HERMAN’S HERMITS “I'm Into Something Good” (top 13)THE FOUR TOPS “Without the one you love (Life's not worth while)” (top 43)JOHNNY RIVERS “Mountain of love” (top 9)THE NEWBEATS “Everything’s alright” (top 16)THE BEACH BOYS “Dance dance dance” (top 8)JAN and DEAN “Sidewalk surfin’” (top 25)THE FOUR SEASONS “Big man in town” (top 20)THE GESTURES “Run run run” (top 44)THE RONETTES “Walking in the rain” (top 23)THE JEWELS “Opportunity” (top 64)MAJOR LANCE “Somettimes I wonder” (top 64)THE DRIFTERS “Saturday night at the movies” (top 18)Escuchar audio
We've got some exciting new finds for our record collections to share on today's radio dance party. There's a version of a Tams classic northern soul song we hadn't heard before, an Ikettes record that had so far escaped us, a nice Tina Britt tune, and a rare one by Kenny Wells that made its way into James's play box. We've got Major Lance, The Sweet Inspirations, Dolly Parton, Mel Torme, Jackie Shane, The Artistics, some Hoosier garage rock, and more!For more info and tracklisting, visit: https://thefaceradio.com/that-driving-beat/Tune into new broadcasts of That Driving Beat, Tuesdays from 8- 10 PM EST / 1 - 3 AM GMT//Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
We've got some exciting new finds for our record collections to share on today's radio dance party. There's a version of a Tams classic northern soul song we hadn't heard before, an Ikettes record that had so far escaped us, a nice Tina Britt tune, and a rare one by Kenny Wells that made its way into James's play box. We've got Major Lance, The Sweet Inspirations, Dolly Parton, Mel Torme, Jackie Shane, The Artistics, some Hoosier garage rock, and more! -Originally broadcast August 25, 2024- Willie Mitchell - That Driving BeatWillie Parker - I Live the Life I LoveBrothers and Sisters - Shake A LadyThe Ikettes - Sally Go Round the RosesMajor Lance - Little Young LoverThe Sensations - Gotta Find Myself Another GirlD.J. Groover - Hey Girl, Don't Bother MeKenny Wells - Isn't It Just A ShameBetty Adams - See Me ThroughBobby Freeman - C'mon and SwimJackie Lee - The Shotgun and the DuckMarion Black - Who KnowsThe Charts - I Wanna Take You HomeThe Sweet Inspirations - I'm BlueTina Britt - The Real ThingDolly Parton - Control YourselfCharlie Gracie - Walk With Me GirlDon Covay & Goodtimers - SeesawBocky and the Visions - Good Good Lovin'The Surf Suns - Still In Love With You BabyThe Trolls - Every Day and Every NightMel Tormé - Comin' Home BabyMarie Knight - Cry Me A RiverJackie Shane - Any Other WayBad & Good Boys - We Got SoulHomer Banks - 60 Minutes of Your LoveThe Imaginations - I Love You, More (Than Anyone)Otis Leavill - Charlotte (Yes I'm Gonna Miss You}J.J. Jackson - Here We Go AgainSister Sledge - Love Don't You Go Through No Changes On MeThe Artistics - It's Those Little Things That CountSherri James - Sweet Talkin' GuyAl Greene & The Soul Mates - Don't Leave MeThe Chirades - PacemakerThe Intensions - I Don't Care AnymoreOtis Clay - It's Easier Said, Than Done Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week's episode of Vinyl Fridays is a double date of sorts as Brandon & AP Lindsay welcome record collectors and vinyl enthusiasts Ethan & Robyn. Yes, spinning records has become the new Bridge. Oh, it's another eclectic mix of classics, newbies, folk, new wave, punk. soul, and more . . . Including, but not limited to Miriam Makeba, Major Lance, Sparkle Horse, T.Rex, Brian Eno, Last Dinner Party, Ronee Blakley, and The Big Boys. Vinyl Fridays theme song by Dazzleflage Bed music: Apache by Jorgan Ingmann Apache by The Incredible Bongo Band Apache 65' by Davie Allan & The Arrows Biradio.libsyn.com Instagram: @birp60406 Facebook: @blueislandradio If you'd like to support the show visit Patreon.com/blueislandradio
Nos sentimos obligados a hacer una segunda parte dedicada a las canciones que alcanzaron su puesto más alto en listas en julio de 1964. Una selección vinculada plenamente a artistas estadounidenses con mucho peso del soul, estilo que cada vez cobra más importancia, con especial atención a esa factoría de hits que era la disquera Motown de Detroit.(Foto del podcast; The Temptations con Smokey Robinson y el fundador de Motown, Berry Gordy)Playlist;(sintonía) HENRY MANCINI and HIS ORCHESTRA “A shot in the dark” (Top 97)THE IMPRESSIONS “Keep on pushing” (Top 10)SAM COOKE “Good times” (Top 11)SAM COOKE “Tennessee waltz” (Top 35)JAMES BROWN “The things that I used to do” (Top 99)ELVIS PRESLEY “Viva Las Vegas” (Top 92)TRINI LOPEZ “What have I got on my own” (Top 43)THE TEMPTATIONS “I’ll be in trouble” (Top 33)STEVIE WONDER “Hey Harmonica man” (Top 29)MARVIN GAYE “Try it baby” (Top 15)MARVIN GAYE and MARY WELLS “What’s the matter with you baby” (Top 17)EDDIE HOLLAND “Just ain’t enough love” (Top 54)MAJOR LANCE “It ain’t no use” (Top 68)MAJOR LANCE “Girls” (Top 68)CHUBBY CHECKER “Lazy Elsie Molly” (Top 40)ROUND ROBIN “Kick That Little Foot Sally" (Top 61)THE EVERLY BROTHERS “The Ferris Wheel” (Top 72)GLORIA LYNNE “Don't Take Your Love from Me” (Top 74)Escuchar audio
Tommy Stewart is an important underground figure for the funk music. Born in 1939…he was drawn to music at early age thanks to his mother. In 1964 he played with Fred Wesley and members of the 55th Army band. He wrote and composed for TV and even played with Blue Note recording artist Duke Pearson. In 1973 he arranged and composed a musical score called “The Burning of Atlanta” and later on, worked as arranger, producer, performer and writer for the likes of Clarence Carter, Candi Staton, Johnny Taylor, Major Lance, Eddie Kendricks, Luther Ingram, Millie Jackson, Flip Wilson, Roy Gaines, Tamiko Jones and many others. His self titled LP and sophomore follow up as Stevo, has Stewart often labeled as an innovator of disco-funk….but on my books he is a funk master…enjoy the show
In this evening's show I will be playing tracks by artists such as Brenda Holloway, Major Lance and The Ethics. Tune into new broadcasts of Dab Of Soul every Tuesday from Midday - 2 PM EST / 5 - 7 PM GMT.For more info visit: https://thefaceradio.com/dab-of-soul///Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Exactamente el 1 de febrero de 1964 The Beatles alcanzan el número 1 con su primer single lanzado en el mercado americano. Los artistas estadounidenses aún no podían imaginarse la fiebre que se iba a desatar, la inminente llegada de la invasión británica o lo que iban a cambiar las cosas en los gustos de los jóvenes. En esta nueva entrega de nuestra serie dedicada al Billboard Hot 100 recordamos canciones que llegaron a su puesto más alto en este mes de hace 60 años, dando forma a la música popular del momento.Playlist;(sintonía) THE MARKETTS “Out of limits (top 3)THE BEATLES “I want to hold your hand” (top 1)LESLEY GORE “You don’t own me” (top 2)RICKY NELSON “For you” (top 6)THE FOUR SEASONS “Dawn (go away)” (top 3)THE RIVIERAS “California sun” (top 5)THE RIP CHORDS “Hey Little Cobra” (top 4)JIMMY GILMER and THE FIREBALLS “Daisy petal pickin’” (top 15)AL “HE IS THE KING HIRT “Java” (top 4)THE COOKIES “Girls grow up faster than boys” (top 33)THE RONETTES “Baby I love you” (top 24)THE GIRLFRIENDS “My one and only Jimmy boy” (top 49)THE CRESCENTS featuring CHIYO “Pink dominos” (top 69)GINNY ARGEL “Dumb head” (top 50)OTIS REDDING “Pain in my heart” (top 61)MAJOR LANCE “Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um” (top 5)BON and EARL “Harlem shuffle” (top 44)HENRY MANCINI and his ORCHESTRA “Charade” (top 36)DIONNE WARWICK “Anyone who had a heart” (top 8)Escuchar audio
Sintonía: "Hangin´ High" - Big Timers"You´ll Never Be Sorry" - Gerald Sims; "Paint Yourself In The Corner" - The Classic Sullivans; "Without A Doubt" - Major Lance; "Save Your Love For Me" - Vivian Reed; "Nice And Easy" - Barbara Lynn; "Always Be My Baby" - Duponts; "Love, Love, Love" (Alternate Mix) - Donny Hathaway; "Calling For Your Love" - The Enticers; "Better Believe It" - Brenton Wood; "Don´t Let Me Lose This Dream" - Aretha Franklin; "Let Me Prove That I Love You" - The Dynells; "So Very Hard To Go" - Tower Of Power; "One On One" - Prince Phillip Mitchell; "When You Left Heartache Began" - Archie Bell & The Drells; "Beware Of The Stranger" - Hypnotics; "I´ve Got To Come In" - Jean BattleTodas las músicas extraídas de la recopilación "You Better Believe It! (Rare & Modern Soul Gems From The Vaults Of Atlantic, ATCO, Cotillion, Reprise And Warner Bros. 1967-1978) (Warner, 2004)Escuchar audio
We spin some 60s psychedelic rock on the show today along with Northern Soul, R&B, Motown, Mod and other tunes for your 1960s radio vinyl dance party. James shares a recent estate sale score than knocked a big record off his want list, and Uwe plays some new finds and favorites, including a favorite cover of a hit Rolling Stones song and a treasured Major Lance disc. Originally broadcast December 3, 2023 Willie Mitchell / That Driving BeatBobby Hebb / Love MeThe Clefs Of Lavender Hill / First Tell Me WhySalt and Pepper / Rock Me In The CradleJay & The Americans / Come Dance With MeThe Ronettes / Be My BabyThe Shirelles / Mama, Here Comes the BrideChuck Brooks / Baa Baa Black SheepJames & Bobby Purify / Everybody Needs SomebodyThe Capitols / Zig - ZaggingDebbie Dean / Don't Let Him Shop AroundThe Waters / Mother SamwellThe Fleur De Lys / CirclesThe Standells / Why Did You Hurt MeThe Human Beinz / I've Got To Keep On Pushin'Herbert Hunter / The Right String But The Wrong Yo-YoThe Bad Seeds / I'm A King BeeNeal and the Newcomers / Rockin' PneumoniaThe Avengers / No WonderMickey Denton / Ain't Love GrandThe Freeman Brothers / My BabyBenny Gordon & The Soul Brothers / I Can't Turn You LooseMajor Lance / You Don't Want Me No MoreThe Wallace Brothers / Woman, Hang Your Head in ShameChris Farlowe / Out of TimeThe Loved Ones / Together, TogetherAmen Corner / Get BackSoul, Inc. / SatisfiedThe Underdogs / Mo Jo HannaThe Poppies / He's ReadyDon Gardner / My Baby Likes to BoogalooGene Miller / I Was WrongBilly Stewart / Count Me OutConnie and Clara / I Will Follow HimShy Guy Douglas / Evening Soul Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Arrancamos una serie de programas mensuales en donde iremos recordando algunas de las canciones más exitosas de las listas del Billboard Hot 100 estadounidense de hace 60 años. Comenzamos en septiembre de 1963, cuando en las listas de éxitos confluían canciones de girl groups, soul, doo wop, surf, novelty o rocknrollPlaylist;(sintonía) LITTLE STEVIE WONDER “Fingertips pt 2”THE ANGELS “My boyfriend’s back”THE JAYNETTS “Sally goes round the roses”MARTHA and THE VANDELLAS “(Love is like a) Heatwave”THE CRYSTALS “Then he kissed me”TRINI LOPEZ “If I had a hammer”INEZ FOXX with CHARLIE FOXX “Mockingbird”MAJOR LANCE “The monkey time”THE SURFARIS “Wipe out”THE BEACH BOYS “Surfer girl”RANDY and THE RAINBOWS “Denise”DION “Donna the prima donna”THE MIRACLES “Mickey’s monkey”SAM COOKE “Frankie and Johnny”WILSON PICKETT “It’s too late”RAY CHARLES “Busted”ALLAN SHERMAN “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah! (A letter from camp)”KAI WINDING “More” Escuchar audio
Sintonía: "South Like West" - Johnny Watson "End Up Crying" - The Vibrations; "Memories" - The Triumphs; "Your Good Girl´s Gonna Go Bad" - Cookie Jackson; "You Ask For One Good Reason" - Larry Williams; "Rhythm" - Major Lance; "You´re Gonna Be Sorry" - The Opals; "Just Another Dance" - Marlina Mars; "Yesterday Is Gone" - The Variations; "You Can´t Take It Away" - Azie Mortimer; "A Little Bit Of Something (Beats A Whole Lot Of Nothing)" - Little Richard; "Second Class Lover" - Jean Dushon; "The Train" - The Belgianettes; "Can´t Live Without Her" - Billy Butler & The Chanters; "Hello Heartaches, Goodbye Love" - Joyce Davis; "That´s What Mama Say" - Walter Jackson; "Cool Breeze" - Gerald Sims; "Ain´t Gonna Move" - Larry Williams & Johnny Watson; "Let Me Show It To You" - The Fundamentals; "I´ll Leave It Up To You" - The Artistics Todas las músicas extraídas de la recopilación "OKeh - A Northern Soul Obsession Volume 2" (Kent Dance, 1997); músicas seleccionadas por Adrian Croasdell Escuchar audio
**It's The Relax With Rendell Show Replay On Trax FM & Rendell Radio. Rendell Featured Boogie, Dance Classics, Contemporary Soul & Easy Listening With Cuts From Jackson Sisters, Change, David Ruffin, Sam & Dave, George Butts, Jimmy Morris, Major Lance, Michelle Wow, QT, Rod, Veronica Brown & More. Catch Rendell Every Saturday From 8PM UK Time The Stations: Trax FM & Rendell Radio #traxfm #rendellradio #soul #funk #70ssoul #80ssoul #60s #boogie #disco #raregrooves #soulclassics #reggae #nusoul #relaxwithrendell Listen Live Here Via The Trax FM Player: chat.traxfm.org/player/index.html Mixcloud LIVE :mixcloud.com/live/traxfm Free Trax FM Android App: play.google.com/store/apps/det...mradio.ba.a6bcb The Trax FM Facebook Page : facebook.com/original103.3 Trax FM Live On Hear This: hearthis.at/k8bdngt4/live Tunerr: tunerr.co/radio/Trax-FM Radio Garden: Trax FM Link: http://radio.garden/listen/trax-fm/IEnsCj55 OnLine Radio Box: onlineradiobox.com/uk/trax/?cs...cs=uk.traxRadio Radio Deck: radiodeck.com/radio/5a09e2de87...7e3370db06d44dc Radio.Net: traxfmlondon.radio.net Stream Radio : streema.com/radios/Trax_FM..The_Originals Live Online Radio: liveonlineradio.net/english/tr...ax-fm-103-3.htm**
**It's The Relax With Rendell Show Replay On Trax FM & Rendell Radio. Rendell Featured Boogie, Dance Classics, Contemporary Soul & Easy Listening FromCars, Major Lance, Untouchables, T Connection, Sunfire, Ronnie Lws, Rebe & Angela, Poison, Phyliss Hymen, Fever, Elvis Presley & More. Catch Rendell Every Saturday From 8PM UK Time The Stations: Trax FM & Rendell Radio #traxfm #rendellradio #soul #funk #70ssoul #80ssoul #60s #boogie #disco #raregrooves #soulclassics #reggae #nusoul #relaxwithrendell Listen Live Here Via The Trax FM Player: chat.traxfm.org/player/index.html Mixcloud LIVE :mixcloud.com/live/traxfm Free Trax FM Android App: play.google.com/store/apps/det...mradio.ba.a6bcb The Trax FM Facebook Page : facebook.com/original103.3 Trax FM Live On Hear This: hearthis.at/k8bdngt4/live Tunerr: tunerr.co/radio/Trax-FM Radio Garden: Trax FM Link: http://radio.garden/listen/trax-fm/IEnsCj55 OnLine Radio Box: onlineradiobox.com/uk/trax/?cs...cs=uk.traxRadio Radio Deck: radiodeck.com/radio/5a09e2de87...7e3370db06d44dc Radio.Net: traxfmlondon.radio.net Stream Radio : streema.com/radios/Trax_FM..The_Originals Live Online Radio: liveonlineradio.net/english/tr...ax-fm-103-3.htm**
Rodrigo Leao & Lula Pena, Amalia Rodrigues, Dulce Pontes, Ana Moura, Justo Betancourt & Rosalía, versiones de "Échame a mi la culpa" y "Azzurro", los Pop Tops, Major Lance, The Caravelles, Josh Turner, Kevin Coyne, Dillard & Clark y Julie Driscoll & Brian Auger.
This episode is part of Pledge Week 2022. Every day this week, I'll be posting old Patreon bonus episodes of the podcast which will have this short intro. These are short, ten- to twenty-minute bonus podcasts which get posted to Patreon for my paying backers every time I post a new main episode -- there are well over a hundred of these in the archive now. If you like the sound of these episodes, then go to patreon.com/andrewhickey and subscribe for as little as a dollar a month or ten dollars a year to get access to all those bonus episodes, plus new ones as they appear. Click below for the transcript Transcript Today we're going to look at a record which I actually originally intended to do a full episode on, but by an artist about whom there simply isn't enough information out there to pull together a full episode -- though some of this information will show up in other contexts in future episodes. So we're going to have a Patreon bonus episode on one of the great soul-pop records of the mid 1960s -- "Rescue Me" by Fontella Bass: [Excerpt: Fontella Bass, "Rescue Me"] Fontella Bass was actually a second-generation singer. Her mother, Martha Bass, was a great gospel singer, who had been trained by Willie Mae Ford Smith, who was often considered the greatest female gospel singer of the twentieth century but who chose only to perform live and on the radio rather than make records. Martha Bass had sung for a short time with the Clara Ward Singers, one of the most important and influential of gospel groups: [Excerpt: The Clara Ward Singers, "Wasn't It A Pity How They Punished My Lord?"] Fontella had been trained by her mother, but she got her start in secular music rather than the gospel music her mother stuck to. She spent much of the early sixties working as a piano player and singer in the band of Little Milton, the blues singer. I don't know exactly which records of his she's on, but she was likely on his top twenty R&B hit "So Mean to Me": [Excerpt: Little Milton, "So Mean to Me"] One night, Little Milton didn't turn up for a show, and so Bass was asked to take the lead vocals until he arrived. Milton's bandleader Oliver Sain was impressed with her voice, and when he quit working with Milton the next year, he took Bass with him, starting up a new act, "The Oliver Sain Soul Revue featuring Fontella and Bobby McClure". She signed to Bobbin Records, where she cut "I Don't Hurt Any More", a cover of an old Hank Snow country song, in 1962: [Excerpt: Fontella Bass, "I Don't Hurt Any More"] After a couple of records with Bobbin, she signed up with Ike Turner, who by this point was running a couple of record labels. She released a single backed by the Ikettes, "My Good Loving": [Excerpt: Fontella Bass, "My Good Loving"] And a duet with Tina Turner, "Poor Little Fool": [Excerpt: Fontella Bass and Tina Turner, "Poor Little Fool"] At the same time she was still working with Sain and McClure, and Sain's soul revue got signed to Checker records, the Chess subsidiary, which was now starting to make soul records, usually produced by Roquel Davis, Berry Gordy's former collaborator, and written or co-written by Carl Smith. These people were also working with Jackie Wilson at Brunswick, and were part of the same scene as Carl Davis, the producer who had worked with Curtis Mayfield, Major Lance, Gene Chandler and the rest. So this was a thriving scene -- not as big as the scenes in Memphis or Detroit, but definitely a group of people who were capable of making big soul hits. Bass and McClure recorded a couple of duo singles with Checker, starting with "Don't Mess Up a Good Thing": [Excerpt: Fontella Bass and Bobby McClure, "Don't Mess Up a Good Thing"] That made the top forty on the pop charts, and number five on the R&B charts. But the follow-up only made the R&B top forty and didn't make the pop charts at all. But Bass would soon release a solo recording, though one with prominent backing vocals by Minnie Ripperton, that would become one of the all-time soul classics -- a Motown soundalike that was very obviously patterned after the songs that Holland, Dozier, and Holland were writing, and which captured their style perfectly: [Excerpt: Fontella Bass, "Rescue Me"] There's some dispute as to who actually wrote "Rescue Me". The credited songwriters are Carl Smith and Raynard Miner, but Bass has repeatedly claimed that she wrote most of the song herself, and that Roquel Davis had assured her that she would be fairly compensated, but she never was. According to Bass, when she finally got her first royalty cheque from Chess, she was so disgusted at the pitiful amount of money she was getting that she tore the cheque up and threw it back across the desk. Her follow-up to "Rescue Me", "Recovery", didn't do so well, making the lower reaches of the pop top forty: [Excerpt: Fontella Bass, "Recovery"] Several more singles were released off Bass' only album on Chess, but she very quickly became disgusted with the whole mainstream music industry. By this point she'd married the avant-garde jazz trumpeter Lester Bowie, and she started performing with his group, the Art Ensemble of Chicago. The music she recorded with the group is excellent, but if anyone bought The Art Ensemble of Chicago With Fontella Bass, the first of the two albums she recorded with the group, expecting something like "Rescue Me", they were probably at the very least bemused by what they got -- two twenty-minute-long tracks that sound like this: [Excerpt: The Art Ensemble of Chicago with Fontella Bass: "How Strange/Ole Jed"] In between the two albums she recorded with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Bass also recorded a second solo album, but after it had little success she largely retired from music to raise her four children, though she would make the odd guest appearance on her husband's records. In the 1990s she made a few gospel records with her mother and her younger brother, the R&B singer David Peaston, and toured a little both on the nostalgia circuit and performing gospel, but she never returned to being a full-time musician. Both she and her brother died in 2012, Peaston from complications of diabetes, Bass from a heart attack after a series of illnesses. "Rescue Me" was her only big hit, and she retired at a point when she was still capable of making plenty of interesting music, but Fontella Bass still had a far more interesting, and fulfilling, career than many other artists who continue trying to chase the ghost of their one hit. She made music on her own terms, and nobody else's, right up until the end.
Rest in peace Norman Strickland Early, Jr., longtime Denver DA Norm Early showed his personality and wisdom in Craig's Lawyers' Lounge in a memorable lively last visit on July 18, 2020. Norm discussed his health challenges, travels, favorite sports, grandparenting, and what he anticipated for his three grandsons and their futures. Listen to Norm sing Monkey Business. Norm was a collegiate athlete, and reflected on competitiveness, and the degree to which he factored that into hiring and promoting prosecutors. Norm reminisces on prosecutions of Quintin Wortham, Frank Rodriguez and the United Bank Massacre (James King) case. We talk about Dale Tooley, Dick Lamm, Bill Buckley, Mike Little, Dick Kay (the furrier), Bill Ritter, Beth McCann, and the Denver DA family. Learn about Norm's Washington D.C. (Chocolate City) upbringing and the impact of the Brown v Board of Education ruling. Find out Norm's reaction to the murder of George Floyd, BLM, Confederate flags, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, the modern GOP, Major Lance, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
This week, we dug into the Philadelphia International Records catalog, as today marked 51 years since its official arrival on the 10th of April, 1971. We had some beautiful soulful sounds from Billy Ocean, Bottom & Co., Major Lance and more.This show was first broadcast on the 10th of April, 2022.For more info and tracklisting, visit: https://thefaceradio.com/the-rendezvous/Tune into new broadcasts of The Rendezvous, LIVE, Sunday from 2 - 4 PM EST / 7 - 9 PM GMT on The Face Radio & Totally Wired Radio.Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/KurtisPowersInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/kurtispowersMixcloud: https://www.mixcloud.com/KurtisPowersSoundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/kurtispowersTwitter: https://twitter.com/kurtispowersEmail: kurtis@thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Las operaciones a pequeña escala significaban que se podía realizar una grabación casi al instante. Con José Manuel Corrales.
Con una familia que mantener, Pate comenzó a enfatizar con ser arreglista, ya que ese trabajo se pagaba mejor.
During this episode, our co-hosts are joined by Sergeant Major Lance Nutt. Among other topics, Lance talks about his time serving in the Marines and his efforts to help veterans have a high quality of life.
Tasty Treats are in abundance tonight, as your host, Frozen Lazuras, spins choice cuts from Glorious Din, Fred Schneider, Major Lance, Googoosh, The Sisters of Mercy, and many more. Pudding On The Wrist: Giving you what the algorithms won't since February 2020.
Episode 124 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “People Get Ready", the Impressions, and the early career of Curtis Mayfield. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on "I'm Henry VIII I Am" by Herman's Hermits. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, I've created a Mixcloud playlist, with full versions of all the songs excerpted in this episode. A lot of resources were used for this episode. Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs by Guy and Candie Carawan is a combination oral history of the Civil Rights movement and songbook. Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power by Aaron Cohen is a history of Chicago soul music and the way it intersected with politics. Traveling Soul: The Life of Curtis Mayfield by Todd Mayfield with Travis Atria is a biography of Mayfield by one of his sons, and rather better than one might expect given that. Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul by Craig Werner looks at the parallels and divergences in the careers of its three titular soul stars. This compilation has a decent selection of recordings Mayfield wrote and produced for other artists on OKeh in the early sixties. This single-CD set of Jerry Butler recordings contains his Impressions recordings as well as several songs written or co-written by Mayfield. This double-CD of Major Lance's recordings contains all the hits Mayfield wrote for him. And this double-CD collection has all the Impressions' singles from 1961 through 1968. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A couple of episodes ago we had a look at one of the first classic protest songs of the soul genre. Today we're going to look at how Sam Cooke's baton was passed on to another generation of soul singer/songwriters, and at one of the greatest songwriters of that generation. We're going to look at the early career of Curtis Mayfield, and at "People Get Ready" by the Impressions: [Excerpt: The Impressions, "People Get Ready"] A quick note before I start this one -- there is no way in this episode of avoiding dealing with the fact that the Impressions' first hit with a Curtis Mayfield lead vocal has, in its title, a commonly used word for Romany people beginning with "g" that many of those people regard as a slur -- while others embrace the term for themselves. I've thought long and hard about how to deal with this, and the compromise I've come up with is that I will use excerpts from the song, which will contain that word, but I won't use the word myself. I'm not happy with that compromise, but it's the best I can do. It's unfortunate that that word turns up a *lot* in music in the period I'm covering -- it's basically impossible to avoid. Anyway, on with the show... Curtis Mayfield is one of those musicians who this podcast will almost by definition underserve -- my current plan is to do a second episode on him, but if this was a thousand-song podcast he would have a *lot* more than just two episodes. He was one of the great musical forces of the sixties and seventies, and listeners to the Patreon bonus episodes will already have come across him several times before, as he was one of those musicians who becomes the centre of a whole musical scene, writing and producing for most of the other soul musicians to come out of Chicago in the late fifties and early 1960s. Mayfield grew up in Chicago, in the kind of poverty that is, I hope, unimaginable to most of my listeners. He had to become "the man of the house" from age five, looking after his younger siblings as his mother went out looking for work, as his father abandoned his family, moved away, and changed his name. His mother was on welfare for much of the time, and Mayfield's siblings have talked about how their special Christmas meal often consisted of cornbread and syrup, and they lived off beans, rice, and maybe a scrap of chicken neck every two weeks. They were so hungry so often that they used to make a game of it -- drinking water until they were full, and then making sloshing noises with their bellies, laughing at them making noises other than rumbling. But while his mother was poor, Mayfield saw that there was a way to escape from poverty. Specifically, he saw it in his paternal grandmother, the Reverend A.B. Mayfield, a Spiritualist priest, who was the closest thing to a rich person in his life. For those who don't know what Spiritualism is, it's one of the many new religious movements that sprouted up in the Northeastern US in the mid to late nineteenth centuries, like the Holiness Movement (which became Pentecostalism), the New Thought, Christian Science, Mormonism, and the Jehovah's Witnesses. Spiritualists believe, unlike mainstream Christianity, that it is possible to communicate with the spirits of the dead, and that those spirits can provide information about the afterlife, and about the nature of God and angels. If you've ever seen, either in real life or in a fictional depiction, a medium communicating with spirits through a seance, that's spiritualism. There are numbers of splinter spiritualist movements, and the one Reverend Mayfield, and most Black American Spiritualists at this time, belonged to was one that used a lot of elements of Pentecostalism and couched its teachings in the Bible -- to an outside observer not conversant with the theology, it might seem no different from any other Black church of the period, other than having a woman in charge. But most other churches would not have been funded by their presiding minister's winnings from illegal gambling, as she claimed to have the winning numbers in the local numbers racket come to her in dreams, and won often enough that people believed her. Reverend Mayfield's theology also incorporated elements from the Nation of Islam, which at that time was growing in popularity, and was based in Chicago. Chicago was also the home of gospel music -- it was where Sister Rosetta Tharpe had got her start and where Mahalia Jackson and Thomas Dorsey and the Soul Stirrers were all based -- and so of course Reverend Mayfield's church got its own gospel quartet, the Northern Jubilee Singers. They modelled themselves explicitly on the Soul Stirrers, who at the time were led by Sam Cooke: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers, "Jesus Gave Me Water"] Curtis desperately wanted to join the Northern Jubilee Singers, and particularly admired their lead singer, Jerry Butler, as well as being a huge fan of their inspiration Sam Cooke. But he was too young -- he was eight years old, and the group members were twelve and thirteen, an incommensurable gap at that age. So Curtis couldn't join the Jubilee singers, but he kept trying to perform, and not just with gospel -- as well as gospel, Chicago was also the home of electric blues, being where Chess Records was based, and young Curtis Mayfield was surrounded by the music of people like Muddy Waters: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "Rollin' and Tumblin'"] And so as well as singing gospel songs, he started singing and playing the blues, inspired by Waters, Little Walter, and other Chess acts. His first instrument was the piano, and young Curtis found that he naturally gravitated to the black keys -- he liked the sound of those best, and didn't really like playing the white keys. I won't get into the music theory too much here, but the black keys on a piano make what is called a pentatonic scale -- a five-note scale that is actually the basis for most folk music forms, whether Celtic folk, Indian traditional music, the blues, bluegrass, Chinese traditional music... pentatonic scales have been independently invented by almost every culture, and you might think of them as the "natural" music, what people default to. The black notes on the piano make that scale in the key of F#: [Excerpt: pentatonic scale in F#] The notes in that are F#, G#, A#, C#, and D#. When young Curtis found a guitar in his grandmother's closet, he didn't like the way it sounded -- if you strum the open strings of a guitar they don't make a chord (well, every combination of notes is a chord, but they don't make one most people think of as pleasant) -- the standard guitar tuning is E, A, D, G, B, E. Little Curtis didn't like this sound, so he retuned the guitar to F#, A#, C#, F#, A#, F# -- notes from the chord of F#, and all of them black keys on the piano. Now, tuning a guitar to open chords is a fairly standard thing to do -- guitarists as varied as Keith Richards, Steve Cropper, and Dolly Parton tune their guitars to open chords -- but doing it to F# is something that pretty much only Mayfield ever did, and it meant his note choices were odd ones. He would later say with pride that he used to love it when other guitarists picked up his guitar, because no matter how good they were they couldn't play on his instrument. He quickly became extremely proficient as a blues guitarist, and his guitar playing soon led the Northern Jubilee Singers to reconsider having him in the band. By the time he was eleven he was a member of the group and travelling with them to gospel conventions all over the US. But he had his fingers in multiple musical pies -- he formed a blues group, who would busk outside the pool-hall where his uncle was playing, and he also formed a doo-wop group, the Alphatones, who became locally popular. Jerry Butler, the Jubilee Singers' lead vocalist, had also joined a doo-wop group -- a group called the Roosters, who had moved up to Chicago from Chattanooga. Butler was convinced that to make the Roosters stand out, they needed a guitarist like Mayfield, but Mayfield at first remained uninterested -- he already had his own group, the Alphatones. Butler suggested that Mayfield should rehearse with both groups, three days a week each, and then stick with the group that was better. Soon Mayfield found himself a full-time member of the Roosters. In 1957, when Curtis was fifteen, the group entered a talent contest at a local school, headlined by the Medallionaires, a locally-popular group who had released a single on Mercury, "Magic Moonlight": [Excerpt: The Medallionaires, "Magic Moonlight"] The Medallionaires' manager, Eddie Thomas, had been around the music industry since he was a child – his stepfather had been the great blues pianist Big Maceo Merriweather, who had made records like "Worried Life Blues": [Excerpt: Big Maceo Merriweather, "Worried Life Blues"] Thomas hadn't had any success in the industry yet, but at this talent contest, the Roosters did a close-harmony version of Sam Cooke's "You Send Me", and Thomas decided that they had potential, especially Mayfield and Butler. He signed them to a management contract, but insisted they changed their name. They cast around for a long time to find something more suitable, and eventually decided on The Impressions, because they'd made such an impression on Thomas. The group were immediately taken by Thomas on a tour of the large indie labels, and at each one they sang a song that members of the group had written, which was inspired by a song called "Open Our Eyes" by the Gospel Clefs: [Excerpt: The Gospel Clefs, "Open Our Eyes"] Herman Lubinsky at Savoy liked the song, and suggested that Jerry speak-sing it, which was a suggestion the group took up, but he passed on them. So did Ralph Bass at King. Mercury Records gave them some session work, but weren't able to sign the group themselves -- the session was with the big band singer Eddie Howard, singing backing vocals on a remake of "My Last Goodbye", a song he'd recorded multiple times before. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to track down a copy of that recording, the Impressions' first, only Howard's other recordings of the song. Eventually, the group got the interest of a tiny label called Bandera, whose owner Vi Muszynski was interested -- but she had to get the approval of Vee-Jay Records, the larger label that distributed Bandera's records. Vee-Jay was a very odd label. It was one of a tiny number of Black-owned record labels in America at the time, and possibly the biggest of them, and it's interesting to compare them to Chess Records, which was based literally across the road. Both put out R&B records, but Chess was white-owned and specialised in hardcore Chicago electric blues -- Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter and so on. Vee-Jay, on the other hand, certainly put out its fair share of that kind of music, but they also put out a lot of much smoother doo-wop and early soul, and they would have their biggest hits a few years after this, not with blues artists, but with the Four Seasons, and with their licensing of British records by Frank Ifield and the Beatles. Both Vee-Jay and Chess were aiming at a largely Black market, but Black-owned Vee-Jay was much more comfortable with white pop acts than white-owned Chess. Muszynski set up an audition with Calvin Carter, the head of A&R at Vee-Jay, and selected the material the group were to perform for Carter -- rather corny songs the group were not at all comfortable with. They ran through that repertoire, and Carter said they sounded good but didn't they have any originals? They played a couple of originals, and Carter wasn't interested in those. Then Carter had a thought -- did they have any songs they felt ashamed of playing for him? Something that they didn't normally do? They did -- they played that song that the group had written, the one based on "Open Our Eyes". It was called "For Your Precious Love", and Carter immediately called in another group, the Spaniels, who were favourites of the Impressions and had had hits with records like "Goodnite Sweetheart Goodnite": [Excerpt: The Spaniels, "Goodnite, Sweetheart, Goodnite"] Carter insisted on the Impressions singing their song for the Spaniels, and Butler in particular was very worried -- he assumed that Carter just wanted to take their song and give it to the bigger group. But after they played the song again, the Spaniels all enthused about how great the Impressions were and what a big hit the Impressions were going to have with the song. They realised that Carter just *really liked* them and the song, and wanted to show them off. The group went into the studio, and recorded half a dozen takes of "For Your Precious Love", but none of them came off correctly. Eventually Carter realised what the problem was -- Mayfield wasn't a member of the musicians' union, and so Carter had hired session guitarists, but they couldn't play the song the way Mayfield did. Eventually, Carter got the guitarists to agree to take the money, not play, and not tell the union if he got Mayfield to play on the track instead of them. After that, they got it in two takes: [Excerpt: Jerry Butler and the Impressions, "For Your Precious Love"] When it came out, the record caused a major problem for the group, because they discovered when they saw the label that it wasn't credited to "The Impressions", but to "Jerry Butler and the Impressions". The label had decided that they were going to follow the strategy that had worked for so many acts before -- put out records credited to "Singer and Group", and then if they were successful develop that into two separate acts. To his credit, Butler immediately insisted that the record company get the label reprinted, but Vee-Jay said that wasn't something they could do. It was too late, the record was going out as Jerry Butler and the Impressions and that was an end to it. The group were immediately put on the promotional circuit -- there was a rumour that Roy Hamilton, the star who had had hits with "Unchained Melody" and "Ebb Tide", was going to put out a cover version, as the song was perfectly in his style, and so the group needed to get their version known before he could cut his cover. They travelled to Philadelphia, where they performed for the DJ Georgie Woods. We talked about Woods briefly last episode -- he was the one who would later coin the term "blue-eyed soul" to describe the Righteous Brothers -- and Woods was also the person who let Dick Clark know what the important Black records were, so Clark could feature them on his show. Woods started to promote the record, and suddenly Jerry Butler and the Impressions were huge -- "For Your Precious Love" made number three on the R&B charts and number eleven on the pop charts. Their next session produced another hit, "Come Back My Love", although that only made the R&B top thirty and was nowhere near as big a hit: [Excerpt: Jerry Butler and the Impressions, "Come Back My Love"] That would be the last time the original lineup of the Impressions would record together. Shortly afterwards, before a gig in Texas, Jerry Butler called the President of the record label to sort out a minor financial problem. Once the problem had been sorted out, the president put the phone down, but then one of the other Impressions, Arthur Brooks, asked if he could have a word. Butler explained that the other person had hung up, and Brooks went ballistic, saying that Butler thought he was in charge, and thought that he could do all the talking for the group. Well, if he thought that, he could do all the singing too. Brooks and his brother Richard weren't going on stage. Sam Gooden said he wasn't going on either -- he'd been an original Rooster with the Brooks brothers before Butler had joined the group, and he was siding with them. That left Curtis Mayfield. Mayfield said he was still going on stage, because he wanted to get paid. The group solidarity having crumbled, Gooden changed his mind and said he might as well go on with them, so Butler, Mayfield, and Gooden went on as a trio. Butler noticed that the audience didn't notice a difference -- they literally didn't know the Brooks brothers existed -- and that was the point at which he decided to go solo. The Impressions continued without Butler, with Mayfield, Gooden, and the Brooks brothers recruiting Fred Cash, who had sung with the Roosters when they were still in Tennessee. Mayfield took over the lead vocals and soon started attracting the same resentment that Butler had. Vee-Jay dropped the Impressions, and they started looking round for other labels and working whatever odd jobs they could. Mayfield did get some work from Vee-Jay, though, working as a session player on records by people like Jimmy Reed. There's some question about which sessions Mayfield actually played -- I've seen conflicting information in different sessionographies -- but it's at least possible that Mayfield's playing on Reed's most famous record, "Baby What You Want Me to Do": [Excerpt: Jimmy Reed, "Baby What You Want Me to Do"] And one of Mayfield's friends, a singer called Major Lance, managed to get himself a one-off single deal with Mercury Records after becoming a minor celebrity as a dancer on a TV show. Mayfield wrote that one single, though it wasn't a hit: [Excerpt: Major Lance, "I Got a Girl"] Someone else who wasn't having hits was Jerry Butler. By late 1960 it had been two years since "For Your Precious Love" and Butler hadn't made the Hot One Hundred in that time, though he'd had a few minor R&B hits. He was playing the chitlin' circuit, and in the middle of a tour, his guitarist quit. Butler phoned Mayfield, who had just received a four hundred dollar tax bill he couldn't pay -- a lot of money for an unemployed musician in 1960. Mayfield immediately joined Butler's band to pay off his back taxes, and he also started writing songs with Butler. "He Will Break Your Heart", a collaboration between the two (with Calvin Carter also credited), made the top ten on the pop chart and number one on the R&B chart: [Excerpt: Jerry Butler, "He Will Break Your Heart"] Even more important for Mayfield than writing a top ten hit, though, was his experience playing for Butler at the Harlem Apollo. Not because of the shows themselves, but because playing a residency in New York allowed him to hang out at the Turf, a restaurant near the Brill Building where all the songwriters would hang out. Or, more specifically, where all the *poorer* songwriters would hang out -- the Turf did roast beef sandwiches for fifty cents if you ate standing at the counter rather than seated at a table, and it also had twenty payphones, so all those songwriters who didn't have their own offices would do their business from the phone booths. Mayfield would hang out there to learn the secrets of the business, and that meant he learned the single most important lesson there is -- keep your own publishing. These writers, some of whom had written many hit songs, were living off twenty-five-dollar advances while the publishing companies were making millions. Mayfield also discovered that Sam Cooke, the man he saw as the model for how his career should go, owned his own publishing company. So he did some research, found out that it didn't actually cost anything to start up a publishing company, and started his own, Curtom, named as a portmanteau of his forename and the surname of Eddie Thomas, the Impressions' manager. While the Impressions' career was in the doldrums, Thomas, too, had been working for Butler, as his driver and valet, and he and Mayfield became close, sharing costs and hotel rooms in order to save money. Mayfield not only paid his tax bill, but by cutting costs everywhere he could he saved up a thousand dollars, which he decided to use to record a song he'd written specifically for the Impressions, not for Butler. (This is the song I mentioned at the beginning with the potential slur in the title. If you don't want to hear that, skip forward thirty seconds now): [Excerpt: The Impressions, "Gypsy Woman"] That track got the Impressions signed to ABC/Paramount records, and it made the top twenty on the pop charts and sold half a million copies, thanks once again to promotion from Georgie Woods. But once again, the follow-ups flopped badly, and the Brooks brothers quit the group, because they wanted to be doing harder-edged R&B in the mould of Little Richard, Hank Ballard, and James Brown, not the soft melodic stuff that Mayfield was writing. The Impressions continued as a three-piece group, and Mayfield would later say that this had been the making of them. A three-part harmony group allowed for much more spontaneity and trading of parts, for the singers to move freely between lead and backing vocals and to move into different parts of their ranges, where when they had been a five-piece group everything had been much more rigid, as if a singer moved away from his assigned part, he would find himself clashing with another singer's part. But as the group were not having hits, Mayfield was still looking for other work, and he found it at OKeh Records, which was going through something of a boom in this period thanks to the producer Carl Davis. Davis took Mayfield on as an associate producer and right-hand man, primarily in order to get him as a guitarist, but Mayfield was also a valuable talent scout, backing vocalist, and especially songwriter. Working with Davis and arranger Johnny Pate, between 1963 and 1965 Mayfield wrote and played on a huge number of R&B hits for OKeh, including "It's All Over" by Walter Jackson: [Excerpt: Walter Jackson, "It's All Over"] "Gonna Be Good Times" for Gene Chandler: [Excerpt: Gene Chandler, "Gonna Be Good Times"] And a whole string of hits for Jerry Butler's brother Billy and his group The Enchanters, starting with "Gotta Get Away": [Excerpt: Billy Butler and the Enchanters, "Gotta Get Away"] But the real commercial success came from Mayfield's old friend Major Lance, who Mayfield got signed to OKeh. Lance had several minor hits written by Mayfield, but his big success came with a song that Mayfield had written for the Impressions, but decided against recording with them, as it was a novelty dance song and he didn't think that they should be doing that kind of material. The Impressions sang backing vocals on Major Lance's "The Monkey Time", written by Mayfield, which became a top ten pop hit: [Excerpt: Major Lance, "The Monkey Time"] Mayfield would write several more hits for Major Lance, including the one that became his biggest hit, "Um Um Um Um Um Um", which went top five pop and made number one on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Major Lance, "Um Um Um Um Um Um (Curious Mind)"] So Mayfield was making hits for other people at a furious rate, but he was somehow unable to have hits with his own group. He was still pushing the Impressions, but they had to be a weekend commitment -- the group would play gigs all over the country at weekends, but Monday through Friday Mayfield was in the studio cutting hits for other people -- and he was also trying to keep up a relationship not only with his wife and first child, but with the woman who would become his second wife, with whom he was cheating on his first. He was young enough that he could just about keep this up -- he was only twenty at this point, though he was already a veteran of the music industry -- but it did mean that the Impressions were a lower priority than they might have been. At least, they were until, in August 1963, between those two huge Major Lance hits, Curtis Mayfield finally wrote another big hit for the Impressions -- their first in their new three-piece lineup. Everyone could tell "It's All Right" was a hit, and Gene Chandler begged to be allowed to record it, but Mayfield insisted that his new song was for his group: [Excerpt: The Impressions, "It's All Right"] "It's All Right" went to number four on the pop chart, and number one R&B. And this time, the group didn't mess up the follow-up. Their next two singles, "Talking About My Baby" and "I'm So Proud", both made the pop top twenty, and the Impressions were now stars. Mayfield also took a trip to Jamaica around this time, with Carl Davis, to produce an album of Jamaican artists, titled "The Real Jamaica Ska", featuring acts like Lord Creator and Jimmy Cliff: [Excerpt: Jimmy Cliff, "Ska All Over the World"] But Mayfield was also becoming increasingly politically aware. As the Civil Rights movement in the US was gaining steam, it was also starting to expose broader systemic problems that affected Black people in the North, not just the South. In Chicago, while Black people had been able to vote for decades, and indeed were a substantial political power block, all that this actually meant in practice was that a few powerful self-appointed community leaders had a vested interest in keeping things as they were. Segregation still existed -- in 1963, around the time that "It's All Right" came out, there was a school strike in the city, where nearly a quarter of a million children refused to go to school. Black schools were so overcrowded that it became impossible for children to learn there, but rather than integrate the schools and let Black kids go to the less-crowded white schools, the head of public education in Chicago decided instead to make the children go to school in shifts, so some were going ridiculously early in the morning while others were having to go to school in the evening. And there were more difficult arguments going on around segregation among Black people in Chicago. The issues in the South seemed straightforward in comparison -- no Black person wanted to be lynched or to be denied the right to vote. But in Chicago there was the question of integrating the two musicians' union chapters in the city. Some Black proponents of integration saw merging the two union chapters as a way for Black musicians to get the opportunity to play lucrative sessions for advertising jingles and so on, which only went to white players. But a vocal minority of musicians were convinced that the upshot of integrating the unions would be that Black players would still be denied those jobs, but white players would start getting some of the soul and R&B sessions that only Black players were playing, and thought that the end result would be that white people would gentrify those areas of music and culture where Black people had carved out spaces for themselves, while still denying Black people the opportunity to move into the white spaces. Mayfield was deeply, deeply, invested in the Civil Rights movement, and the wider discourse as more radical voices started to gain strength in the movement. And he was particularly inspired by his hero, Sam Cooke, recording "A Change is Gonna Come". As the rhetoric of the Civil Rights movement was so deeply rooted in religious language, it was natural that Mayfield would turn to the gospel music he'd grown up on for his own first song about these issues, "Keep on Pushing": [Excerpt: The Impressions, "Keep on Pushing"] That became another huge hit, making the top ten on the pop chart and number one on the R&B chart. It's instructive to look at reactions to the Impressions, and to Mayfield's sweet, melodic, singing. White audiences were often dismissive of the Impressions, believing they were attempting to sell out to white people and were therefore not Black enough -- a typical reaction is that of Arnold Shaw, the white music writer, who in 1970 referred to the Impressions as Oreos -- a derogatory term for people who are "Black on the outside, white inside". Oddly, though, Black audiences seem not to have recognised the expertise of elderly white men on who was Black enough, and despite white critics' protestations continued listening to and buying the Impressions' records, and incorporating Mayfield's songs into their activism. For example, Sing For Freedom, a great oral-history-cum-songbook which collects songs sung by Civil Rights activists, collected contemporaneously by folklorists, has no fewer than four Impressions songs included, in lightly adapted versions, as sung by the Chicago Freedom Movement, the group led by Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson and others, who campaigned for an end to housing segregation in Chicago. It quotes Jimmy Collier, a Black civil rights activist and folk singer, saying "There's a rock 'n' roll group called the Impressions and we call them ‘movement fellows' and we try to sing a lot of their songs. Songs like ‘Keep On Pushin',' ‘I Been Trying,' ‘I'm So Proud,' ‘It's Gonna Be a Long, Long Winter,' ‘People Get Ready, There's a Train a-Comin',' ‘There's a Meeting Over Yonder' really speak to the situation a lot of us find ourselves in." I mention this discrepancy because this is something that comes up throughout music history -- white people dismissing Black people as not being "Black enough" and trying to appeal to whites, even as Black audiences were embracing those artists in preference to the artists who had white people's seal of approval as being authentically Black. I mention this because I am myself a white man, and it is very important for me to acknowledge that I will make similar errors when talking about Black culture, as I am here. "Keep on Pushing" was the Impressions' first political record, but by no means the most important. In 1965 the Civil Rights movement seemed to be starting to unravel, and there were increasing ruptures between the hardliners who would go on to form what would become the Black Power movement and the more moderate older generation. These ruptures were only exacerbated by the murder of Malcolm X, the most powerful voice on the radical side. Mayfield was depressed by this fragmentation, and wanted to write a song of hope, one that brought everyone together. To see the roots of the song Mayfield came up with we have to go all the way back to episode five, and to "This Train", the old gospel song which Rosetta Tharpe had made famous: [Excerpt: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, "This Train (live)"] The image of the train leading to freedom had always been a powerful one in Black culture, dating back to the Underground Railroad -- the network of people who helped enslaved people flee their abusers and get away to countries where they could be free. It was also a particularly potent image for Black people in the northern cities, many of whom had travelled there by train from the South, or whose parents had. Mayfield took the old song, and built a new song around it. His melody is closer than it might seem to that of "This Train", but has a totally different sound and feeling, one of gentle hope rather than fervent excitement. And there's a difference of emphasis in the lyrics too. "This Train", as befits a singer like Tharpe who belonged to a Pentecostal "holiness" sect which taught the need for upright conduct at all times, is mostly a list of those sinners who won't be allowed on the train. Mayfield, by contrast, had been brought up in a Spiritualist church, and one of the nine affirmations of Spiritualism is "We affirm that the doorway to reformation is never closed against any soul here or hereafter". Mayfield's song does talk about how "There ain't no room for the hopeless sinner, Whom would hurt all mankind just to save his own", but the emphasis is on how "there's hope for *all*, among those loved the most", and how "you don't need no baggage", and "don't need no ticket". It's a song which is fundamentally inclusive, offering a vision of hope and freedom in which all are welcome: [Excerpt: The Impressions, "People Get Ready"] The song quickly became one of the most important songs to the Civil Rights movement -- Doctor King called it "the unofficial anthem of the Civil Rights movement" -- as well as becoming yet another big hit. We will continue to explore the way Mayfield and the Impressions reacted to, were inspired by, and themselves inspired Black political movements when we look at them again, and their political importance was extraordinary. But this is a podcast about music, and so I'll finish with a note about their musical importance. As with many R&B acts, the Impressions were massive in Jamaica, and they toured there in 1966. In the front row when they played the Carib Theatre in Kingston were three young men who had recently formed a group which they had explicitly modelled on the Impressions and their three-part harmonies. That group had even taken advantage of Jamaica's nonexistent copyright laws to incorporate a big chunk of "People Get Ready" into one of their own songs, which was included on their first album: [Excerpt: The Wailers, "One Love (1965 version)"] Bob Marley and the Wailers would soon become a lot more than an Impressions soundalike group, but that, of course, is a story for a future episode...
** visit acedoutpodcast.com to see photos and more **2021 is the year that MARSHALL THOMPSON—driving force and choreographer for Chicago hitmakers the CHI-LITES—shimmies from star to superstar status. Specifically, his group has been selected for inclusion among this year's additions to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And it's been a long time coming. Between 1969 and 1974, the Chi-Lites sold millions of copies of their 11 top ten hits, including their eternal crowning achievements, “Have You Seen Her” (from [For God's Sake] Give More Power to the People, 1971) and “Oh Girl” (from A Lonely Man, 1972). The honor of receiving a Hollywood star brings things full circle for Thompson, as Gladys Knight will be performing for the occasion. She's the one who gave Marshall his first big break—on the drums. As a teen, he was always sneaking into the Regal Theatre, only to be tossed out into the snow by the bouncer. But when he found out that Knight would be appearing, he hatched a plan. He rehearsed for weeks in the family basement, mastering the beats to all of her songs. Then he went and got himself some slick threads: cross tie, patent leather shoes, black slacks, and white shirt. When he showed up at the Regal on the big night, he looked like all the other fellas in the house band. So he walked right in with everybody else, the bouncer none the wiser. Now this was big time. The band was at least two dozen pieces, led by none other than Red Saunders! Yet his drummer just couldn't get the feel down. This was Thompson's big chance. “The drummer couldn't play the music,” he recalls “So I raised my hand… ‘Hey Ms. Gladys! Can I play your show?' She said, ‘Come on up here. Showtime is in about 2 hours and this guy's messin up.'” He got the gig and played with her for the week. From there, he got a chance to record with Jackie Wilson, and toured with Major Lance. Despite all this success on the skins, dancing and singing would prove to be Thompson's true calling. He was part of a group called the Desideros with Creadel “Red” Jones. They were frenemies with another clique of singers, the Chanteurs, which included Robert “Squirrel” Lester and songwriter Eugene Record. They would battle all the time. “They could sing real good, and we could dance real good,” Marshall explains. So when both bands broke up, they knew it would be a smart play to join forces. “We went over to their group and I taught them to dance and they had to teach us how to sing like them,” he says. Marshall & the Hi-Lites was born. Throughout the 60s, they pounded the pavement, trying to make it. They recorded singles on local labels, but by the time they got signed to Brunswick, they discovered another band was already using the ‘Hi-Lites' name. So they decided to change it to ‘Chi-Lites' in honor of their homebase. That was the good luck charm, because not long after the 70s rolled in, they scored their first million-selling single, “(For God's Sake) Give More Power to the People.” But “Have You Seen Her” was the real groundbreaker. It was a B-side at first, a tune that the Chi-Lites' band hadn't even bothered to rehearse for live shows. Then one night, when the group was out on the road at a gig, the crowd started screaming and hollering for the song. So they sang it a cappella, over and over again for 15 minutes. After that, they were selling 10k copies per day. The amazing part was the song clocked in at over five minutes, twice as long as the average single in those days. “We didn't think we were gonna get it on the radio,” says Marshall. “It was too long… But the record started selling so much they said ‘Leave it like it is.'” From there, the hits just kept coming. And along the way, Marshall made some amazing contributions to music history outside of the group as well. In this rare gem of an interview, Marshall talks about being managed by Muhammad Ali in the early years, how he started Soul Train with his good friend Don Cornelius, and helping Joe Jackson and the Jackson Five get their start, introducing them to Bobby Taylor. Thompson also raps about being the Chi-Lite's official hairdresser, why engineer Bruce Vadim built a special microphone for each member, and how they developed their dance moves and harmonies. Produced & Hosted by Ace AlanCohosted by Jay Stonew/ Content Produced by Renee Michele Collins, Nat Collins, & Jay StoneWebsite & Art by 3chardsIn-Studio Pics by Debbie JueEngineered by Nick “Waes” Carden at the Blue Room in Oakland, CA But we couldn't have done it without Mawnstr and especially Scott SheppardIntro track “I Can Never Be” from Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth by the Funkanauts. Go get it wherever music is sold. RIP Brotha P.Next Episode: Grady Thomas
"SOUL WALKING WITH MAJOR LANCE":http://www.soulwalking.co.uk/Major%20Lance.html
Episode 108 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "I Wanna Be Your Man" by the Rolling Stones and how the British blues scene of the early sixties was started by a trombone player. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have an eight-minute bonus episode available, on "The Monkey Time" by Major Lance. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. i used a lot of resources for this episode. Information on Chris Barber comes from Jazz Me Blues: The Autobiography of Chris Barber by Barber and Alyn Shopton. Information on Alexis Korner comes from Alexis Korner: The Biography by Harry Shapiro. Two resources that I've used for this and all future Stones episodes -- The Rolling Stones: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesden is an invaluable reference book, while Old Gods Almost Dead by Stephen Davis is the least inaccurate biography. I've also used Andrew Loog Oldham's autobiography Stoned, and Keith Richards' Life, though be warned that both casually use slurs. This compilation contains Alexis Korner's pre-1963 electric blues material, while this contains the earlier skiffle and country blues music. The live performances by Chris Barber and various blues legends I've used here come from volumes one and two of a three-CD series of these recordings. And this three-CD set contains the A and B sides of all the Stones' singles up to 1971. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we're going to look at a group who, more than any other band of the sixties, sum up what "rock music" means to most people. This is all the more surprising as when they started out they were vehemently opposed to being referred to as "rock and roll". We're going to look at the London blues scene of the early sixties, and how a music scene that was made up of people who thought of themselves as scholars of obscure music, going against commercialism ended up creating some of the most popular and commercial music ever made. We're going to look at the Rolling Stones, and at "I Wanna Be Your Man": [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "I Wanna Be Your Man"] The Rolling Stones' story doesn't actually start with the Rolling Stones, and they won't be appearing until quite near the end of this episode, because to explain how they formed, I have to explain the British blues scene that they formed in. One of the things people asked me when I first started doing the podcast was why I didn't cover people like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf in the early episodes -- after all, most people now think that rock and roll started with those artists. It didn't, as I hope the last hundred or so episodes have shown. But those artists did become influential on its development, and that influence happened largely because of one man, Chris Barber. We've seen Barber before, in a couple of episodes, but this, even more than his leading the band that brought Lonnie Donegan to fame, is where his influence on popular music really changes everything. On the face of it, Chris Barber seems like the last person in the world who one would expect to be responsible, at least indirectly, for some of the most rebellious popular music ever made. He is a trombone player from a background that is about as solidly respectable as one can imagine -- his parents were introduced to each other by the economist John Maynard Keynes, and his father, another economist, was not only offered a knighthood for his war work (he turned it down but accepted a CBE), but Clement Atlee later offered him a safe seat in Parliament if he wanted to become Chancellor of the Exchequer. But when the war started, young Chris Barber started listening to the Armed Forces Network, and became hooked on jazz. By the time the war ended, when he was fifteen, he owned records by Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton and more -- records that were almost impossible to find in the Britain of the 1940s. And along with the jazz records, he was also getting hold of blues records by people like Cow Cow Davenport and Sleepy John Estes: [Excerpt: Sleepy John Estes, "Milk Cow Blues"] In his late teens and early twenties, Barber had become Britain's pre-eminent traditional jazz trombonist -- a position he held until he retired last year, aged eighty-nine -- but he wasn't just interested in trad jazz, but in all of American roots music, which is why he'd ended up accidentally kick-starting the skiffle craze when his guitarist recorded an old Lead Belly song as a track on a Barber album, as we looked at back in the episode on "Rock Island Line". If that had been Barber's only contribution to British rock and roll, he would still have been important -- after all, without "Rock Island Line", it's likely that you could have counted the number of British boys who played guitar in the fifties and sixties on a single hand. But he did far more than that. In the mid to late fifties, Barber became one of the biggest stars in British music. He didn't have a breakout chart hit until 1959, when he released "Petit Fleur", engineered by Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Chris Barber, "Petit Fleur"] And Barber didn't even play on that – it was a clarinet solo by his clarinettist Monty Sunshine. But long before this big chart success he was a huge live draw and made regular appearances on TV and radio, and he was hugely appreciated among music lovers. A parallel for his status in the music world in the more modern era might be someone like, say, Radiohead -- a band who aren't releasing number one singles, but who have a devoted fanbase and are more famous than many of those acts who do have regular hits. And that celebrity status put Barber in a position to do something that changed music forever. Because he desperately wanted to play with his American musical heroes, and he was one of the few people in Britain with the kind of built-in audience that he could bring over obscure Black musicians, some of whom had never even had a record released over here, and get them on stage with him. And he brought over, in particular, blues musicians. Now, just as there was a split in the British jazz community between those who liked traditional Dixieland jazz and those who liked modern jazz, there was a similar split in their tastes in blues and R&B. Those who liked modern jazz -- a music that was dominated by saxophones and piano -- unsurprisingly liked modern keyboard and saxophone-based R&B. Their R&B idol was Ray Charles, whose music was the closest of the great R&B stars to modern jazz, and one stream of the British R&B movement of the sixties came from this scene -- people like the Spencer Davis Group, Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, and Manfred Mann all come from this modernist scene. But the trad people, when they listened to blues, liked music that sounded primitive to them, just as they liked primitive-sounding jazz. Their tastes were very heavily influenced by Alan Lomax -- who came to the UK for a crucial period in the fifties to escape McCarthyism -- and they paralleled those of the American folk scene that Lomax was also part of, and followed the same narrative that Lomax's friend John Hammond had constructed for his Spirituals to Swing concerts, where the Delta country blues of people like Robert Johnson had been the basis for both jazz and boogie piano. This entirely false narrative became the received wisdom among the trad scene in Britain, to the extent that two of the very few people in the world who had actually heard Robert Johnson records before the release of the King of the Delta Blues Singers album were Chris Barber and his sometime guitarist and banjo player Alexis Korner. These people liked Robert Johnson, Big Bill Broonzy, Lead Belly, and Lonnie Johnson's early recordings before his later pop success. They liked solo male performers who played guitar. These two scenes were geographically close -- the Flamingo Club, a modern jazz club that later became the place where Georgie Fame and Chris Farlowe built their audiences, was literally across the road from the Marquee, a trad jazz club that became the centre of guitar-based R&B in the UK. And there wasn't a perfect hard-and-fast split, as we'll see -- but it's generally true that what is nowadays portrayed as a single British "blues scene" was, in its early days, two overlapping but distinct scenes, based in a pre-existing split in the jazz world. Barber was, of course, part of the traditional jazz wing, and indeed he was so influential a part of it that his tastes shaped the tastes of the whole scene to a large extent. But Barber was not as much of a purist as someone like his former collaborator Ken Colyer, who believed that jazz had become corrupted in 1922 by the evil innovations of people like Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson, who were too modern for his tastes. Barber had preferences, but he could appreciate -- and more importantly play -- music in a variety of styles. So Barber started by bringing over Big Bill Broonzy, who John Hammond had got to perform at the Spirituals to Swing concerts when he'd found out Robert Johnson was dead. It was because of Barber bringing Broonzy over that Broonzy got to record with Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, "When Do I Get to Be Called a Man?"] And it was because of Barber bringing Broonzy over that Broonzy appeared on Six-Five Special, along with Tommy Steele, the Vipers, and Mike and Bernie Winters, and thus became the first blues musician that an entire generation of British musicians saw, their template for what a blues musician is. If you watch the Beatles Anthology, for example, in the sections where they talk about the music they were listening to as teenagers, Broonzy is the only blues musician specifically named. That's because of Chris Barber. Broonzy toured with Barber several times in the fifties, before his death in 1958, but he wasn't the only one. Barber brought over many people to perform and record with him, including several we've looked at previously. Like the rock and roll stars who visited the UK at this time, these were generally people who were past their commercial peak in the US, but who were fantastic live performers. The Barber band did recording sessions with Louis Jordan: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan and the Chris Barber band, "Tain't Nobody's Business"] And we're lucky enough that many of the Barber band's shows at the Manchester Free Trade Hall (a venue that would later host two hugely important shows we'll talk about in later episodes) were recorded and have since been released. With those recordings we can hear them backing Sister Rosetta Tharpe: [Excerpt: Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the Chris Barber band, "Peace in the Valley"] Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee: [Excerpt: Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee and the Chris Barber band, "This Little Light of Mine"] And others like Champion Jack Dupree and Sonny Boy Williamson. But there was one particular blues musician that Barber brought over who changed everything for British music. Barber was a member of an organisation called the National Jazz Federation, which helped arrange transatlantic musician exchanges. You might remember that at the time there was a rule imposed by the musicians' unions in the UK and the US that the only way for an American musician to play the UK was if a British musician played the US and vice versa, and the National Jazz Federation helped set these exchanges up. Through the NJF Barber had become friendly with John Lewis, the American pianist who led the Modern Jazz Quartet, and was talking with Lewis about what other musicians he could bring over, and Lewis suggested Muddy Waters. Barber said that would be great, but he had no idea how you'd reach Muddy Waters -- did you send a postcard to the plantation he worked on or something? Lewis laughed, and said that no, Muddy Waters had a Cadillac and an agent. The reason for Barber's confusion was fairly straightfoward -- Barber was thinking of Waters' early recordings, which he knew because of the influence of Alan Lomax. Lomax had discovered Muddy Waters back in 1941. He'd travelled to Clarksdale, Mississippi hoping to record Robert Johnson for the Library of Congress -- apparently he didn't know, or had forgotten, that Johnson had died a few years earlier. When he couldn't find Johnson, he'd found another musician, who had a similar style, and recorded him instead. Waters was a working musician who would play whatever people wanted to listen to -- Gene Autry songs, Glenn Miller, whatever -- but who was particularly proficient in blues, influenced by Son House, the same person who had been Johnson's biggest influence. Lomax recorded him playing acoustic blues on a plantation, and those recordings were put out by the Library of Congress: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "I Be's Troubled"] Those Library of Congress recordings had been hugely influential among the trad and skiffle scenes -- Lonnie Donegan, in particular, had borrowed a copy from the American Embassy's record-lending library and then stolen it because he liked it so much. But after making those recordings, Waters had travelled up to Chicago and gone electric, forming a band with guitarist Jimmie Rodgers (not the same person as the country singer of the same name, or the 50s pop star), harmonica player Little Walter, drummer Elgin Evans, and pianist Otis Spann. Waters had signed to Chess Records, then still named Aristocrat, in 1947, and had started out by recording electric versions of the same material he'd been performing acoustically: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "I Can't Be Satisfied"] But soon he'd partnered with Chess' great bass player, songwriter, and producer Willie Dixon, who wrote a string of blues classics both for Waters and for Chess' other big star Howlin' Wolf. Throughout the early fifties, Waters had a series of hits on the R&B charts with his electric blues records, like the great "Hoochie Coochie Man", which introduced one of the most copied blues riffs ever: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "Hoochie Coochie Man"] But by the late fifties, the hits had started to dry up. Waters was still making great records, but Chess were more interested in artists like Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and the Moonglows, who were selling much more and were having big pop hits, not medium-sized R&B ones. So Waters and his pianist Otis Spann were eager to come over to the UK, and Barber was eager to perform with them. Luckily, unlike many of his trad contemporaries, Barber was comfortable with electric music, and his band quickly learned Waters' current repertoire. Waters came over and played one night at a festival with a different band, made up of modern jazz players who didn't really fit his style before joining the Barber tour, and so he and Spann were a little worried on their first night with the group when they heard these Dixieland trombones and clarinets. But as soon as the group blasted out the riff of "Hoochie Coochie Man" to introduce their guests, Waters and Spann's faces lit up -- they knew these were musicians they could play with, and they fit in with Barber's band perfectly: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, and the Chris Barber band, "Hoochie Coochie Man"] Not everyone watching the tour was as happy as Barber with the electric blues though -- the audiences were often bemused by the electric guitars, which they associated with rock and roll rather than the blues. Waters, like many of his contemporaries, was perfectly willing to adapt his performance to the audience, and so the next time he came over he brought his acoustic guitar and played more in the country acoustic style they expected. The time after that he came over, though, the audiences were disappointed, because he was playing acoustic, and now they wanted and expected him to be playing electric Chicago blues. Because Muddy Waters' first UK tour had developed a fanbase for him, and that fanbase had been cultivated and grown by one man, who had started off playing in the same band as Chris Barber. Alexis Korner had started out in the Ken Colyer band, the same band that Chris Barber had started out in, as a replacement for Lonnie Donegan when Donegan was conscripted. After Donegan had rejoined the band, they'd played together for a while, and the first ever British skiffle group lineup had been Ken and Bill Colyer, Korner, Donegan, and Barber. When the Colyers had left the group and Barber had taken it over, Korner had gone with the Colyers, mostly because he didn't like the fact that Donegan was introducing country and folk elements into skiffle, while Korner liked the blues. As a result, Korner had sung and played on the very first ever British skiffle record, the Ken Colyer group's version of "Midnight Special": [Excerpt: The Ken Colyer Skiffle Group, "Midnight Special"] After that, Korner had also backed Beryl Bryden on some skiffle recordings, which also featured a harmonica player named Cyril Davies: [Excerpt: Beryl Bryden Skiffle Group, "This Train"] But Korner and Davies had soon got sick of skiffle as it developed -- they liked the blues music that formed its basis, but Korner had never been a fan of Lonnie Donegan's singing -- he'd even said as much in the liner notes to an album by the Barber band while both he and Donegan were still in the band -- and what Donegan saw as eclecticism, including Woody Guthrie songs and old English music-hall songs, Korner saw as watering down the music. Korner and Donegan had a war of words in the pages of Melody Maker, at that time the biggest jazz periodical in Britain. Korner started with an article headlined "Skiffle is Piffle", in which he said in part: "It is with shame and considerable regret that I have to admit my part as one of the originators of the movement...British skiffle is, most certainly, a commercial success. But musically it rarely exceeds the mediocre and is, in general, so abysmally low that it defies proper musical judgment". Donegan replied pointing out that Korner was playing in a skiffle group himself, and then Korner replied to that, saying that what he was doing now wasn't skiffle, it was the blues. You can judge for yourself whether the “Blues From the Roundhouse” EP, by Alexis Korner's Breakdown Group, which featured Korner, Davies on guitar and harmonica, plus teachest bass and washboard, was skiffle or blues: [Excerpt: Alexis Korner's Breakdown Group, "Skip to My Lou"] But soon Korner and Davies had changed their group's name to Blues Incorporated, and were recording something that was much closer to the Delta and Chicago blues Davies in particular liked. [Excerpt: Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated feat. Cyril Davies, "Death Letter"] But after the initial recordings, Blues Incorporated stopped being a thing for a while, as Korner got more involved with the folk scene. At a party hosted by Ramblin' Jack Elliot, he met the folk guitarist Davey Graham, who had previously lived in the same squat as Lionel Bart, Tommy Steele's lyricist, if that gives some idea of how small and interlocked the London music scene actually was at this time, for all its factional differences. Korner and Graham formed a guitar duo playing jazzy folk music for a while: [Excerpt: Alexis Korner and Davey Graham, "3/4 AD"] But in 1960, after Chris Barber had done a second tour with Muddy Waters, Barber decided that he needed to make Muddy Waters style blues a regular part of his shows. Barber had entered into a partnership with an accountant, Harold Pendleton, who was secretary of the National Jazz Federation. They co-owned a club, the Marquee, which Pendleton managed, and they were about to start up an annual jazz festival, the Richmond festival, which would eventually grow into the Reading Festival, the second-biggest rock festival in Britain. Barber had a residency at the Marquee, and he wanted to introduce a blues segment into the shows there. He had a singer -- his wife, Ottilie Patterson, who was an excellent singer in the Bessie Smith mould -- and he got a couple of members of his band to back her on some Chicago-style blues songs in the intervals of his shows. He asked Korner to be a part of this interval band, and after a little while it was decided that Korner would form the first ever British electric blues band, which would take over those interval slots, and so Blues Incorporated was reformed, with Cyril Davies rejoining Korner. The first time this group played together, in the first week of 1962, it was Korner on electric guitar, Davies on harmonica, and Chris Barber plus Barber's trumpet player Pat Halcox, but they soon lost the Barber band members. The group was called Blues Incorporated because they were meant to be semi-anonymous -- the idea was that people might join just for a show, or just for a few songs, and they never had the same lineup from one show to the next. For example, their classic album R&B From The Marquee, which wasn't actually recorded at the Marquee, and was produced by Jack Good, features Korner, Davies, sax player Dick Heckstall-Smith, Keith Scott on piano, Spike Heatley on bass, Graham Burbridge on drums, and Long John Baldry on vocals: [Excerpt: Blues Incorporated, "How Long How Long Blues"] But Burbridge wasn't their regular drummer -- that was a modern jazz player named Charlie Watts. And they had a lot of singers. Baldry was one of their regulars, as was Art Wood (who had a brother, Ronnie, who wasn't yet involved with these players). When Charlie quit the band, because it was taking up too much of his time, he was replaced with another drummer, Ginger Baker. When Spike Heatley left the band, Dick Heckstall-Smith brought in a new bass player, Jack Bruce. Sometimes a young man called Eric Clapton would get up on stage for a number or two, though he wouldn't bring his guitar, he'd just sing with them. So would a singer and harmonica player named Paul Jones, later the singer with Manfred Mann, who first travelled down to see the group with a friend of his, a guitarist named Brian Jones, no relation, who would also sit in with the band on guitar, playing Elmore James numbers under the name Elmo Lewis. A young man named Rodney Stewart would sometimes join in for a number or two. And one time Eric Burdon hitch-hiked down from Newcastle to get a chance to sing with the group. He jumped onto the stage when it got to the point in the show that Korner asked for singers from the audience, and so did a skinny young man. Korner diplomatically suggested that they sing a duet, and they agreed on a Billy Boy Arnold number. At the end of the song Korner introduced them -- "Eric Burdon from Newcastle, this is Mick Jagger". Mick Jagger was a middle-class student, studying at the London School of Economics, one of the most prestigious British universities. He soon became a regular guest vocalist with Blues Incorporated, appearing at almost every show. Soon after, Davies left the group -- he wanted to play strictly Chicago style blues, but Korner wanted to play other types of R&B. The final straw for Davies came when Korner brought in Graham Bond on Hammond organ -- it was bad enough that they had a saxophone player, but Hammond was a step too far. Sometimes Jagger would bring on a guitar-playing friend for a song or two -- they'd play a Chuck Berry song, to Davies' disapproval. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had known each other at primary school, but had fallen out of touch for years. Then one day they'd bumped into each other at a train station, and Richards had noticed two albums under Jagger's arm -- one by Muddy Waters and one by Chuck Berry, both of which he'd ordered specially from Chess Records in Chicago because they weren't out in the UK yet. They'd bonded over their love for Berry and Bo Diddley, in particular, and had soon formed a band themselves, Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, with a friend, Dick Taylor, and had made some home recordings of rock and roll and R&B music: [Excerpt: Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, "Beautiful Delilah"] Meanwhile, Brian Jones, the slide player with the Elmore James obsession, decided he wanted to create his own band, who were to be called The Rollin' Stones, named after a favourite Muddy Waters track of his. He got together with Ian Stewart, a piano player who answered an ad in Jazz News magazine. Stewart had very different musical tastes to Jones -- Jones liked Elmore James and Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and especially Jimmy Reed, and very little else, just electric Chicago blues. Stewart was older, and liked boogie piano like Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson, and jump band R&B like Wynonie Harris and Louis Jordan, but he could see that Jones had potential. They tried to get Charlie Watts to join the band, but he refused at first, so they played with a succession of other drummers, starting with Mick Avory. And they needed a singer, and Jones thought that Mick Jagger had genuine star potential. Jagger agreed to join, but only if his mates Dick and Keith could join the band. Jones was a little hesitant -- Mick Jagger was a real blues scholar like him, but he did have a tendency to listen to this rock and roll nonsense rather than proper blues, and Keith seemed even less of a blues purist than that. He probably even listened to Elvis. Dick, meanwhile, was an unknown quantity. But eventually Jones agreed -- though Richards remembers turning up to the first rehearsal and being astonished by Stewart's piano playing, only for Stewart to then turn around to him and say sarcastically "and you must be the Chuck Berry artist". Their first gig was at the Marquee, in place of Blues Incorporated, who were doing a BBC session and couldn't make their regular gig. Taylor and Avory soon left, and they went through a succession of bass players and drummers, played several small gigs, and also recorded a demo, which had no success in getting them a deal: [Excerpt: The Rollin' Stones, "You Can't Judge a Book By its Cover"] By this point, Jones, Richards, and Jagger were all living together, in a flat which has become legendary for its squalour. Jones was managing the group (and pocketing some of the money for himself) and Jones and Richards were spending all day every day playing guitar together, developing an interlocking style in which both could switch from rhythm to lead as the song demanded. Tony Chapman, the drummer they had at the time, brought in a friend of his, Bill Wyman, as bass player -- they didn't like him very much, he was older than the rest of them and seemed to have a bad attitude, and their initial idea was just to get him to leave his equipment with them and then nick it -- he had a really good amplifier that they wanted -- but they eventually decided to keep him in the band. They kept pressuring Charlie Watts to join and replace Chapman, and eventually, after talking it over with Alexis Korner's wife Bobbie, he decided to give it a shot, and joined in early 1963. Watts and Wyman quickly gelled as a rhythm section with a unique style -- Watts would play jazz-inspired shuffles, while Wyman would play fast, throbbing, quavers. The Rollin' Stones were now a six-person group, and they were good. They got a residency at a new club run by Giorgio Gomelsky, a trad jazz promoter who was branching out into R&B. Gomelsky named his club the Crawdaddy Club, after the Bo Diddley song that the Stones ended their sets with. Soon, as well as playing the Crawdaddy every Sunday night, they were playing Ken Colyer's club, Studio 51, on the other side of London every Sunday evening, so Ian Stewart bought a van to lug all their gear around. Gomelsky thought of himself as the group's manager, though he didn't have a formal contract, but Jones disagreed and considered himself the manager, though he never told Gomelsky this. Jones booked the group in at the IBC studios, where they cut a professional demo with Glyn Johns engineering, consisting mostly of Bo Diddley and Jimmy Reed songs: [Excerpt: The Rollin' Stones, "Diddley Daddy"] Gomelsky started getting the group noticed. He even got the Beatles to visit the club and see the group, and the two bands hit it off -- even though John Lennon had no time for Chicago blues, he liked them as people, and would sometimes pop round to the flat where most of the group lived, once finding Mick and Keith in bed together because they didn't have any money to heat the flat. The group's live performances were so good that the Record Mirror, which as its name suggested only normally talked about records, did an article on the group. And the magazine's editor, Peter Jones, raved about them to an acquaintance of his, Andrew Loog Oldham. Oldham was a young man, only nineteen, but he'd already managed to get himself a variety of jobs around and with famous people, mostly by bluffing and conning them into giving him work. He'd worked for Mary Quant, the designer who'd popularised the miniskirt, and then had become a freelance publicist, working with Bob Dylan and Phil Spector on their trips to the UK, and with a succession of minor British pop stars. Most recently, he'd taken a job working with Brian Epstein as the Beatles' London press agent. But he wanted his own Beatles, and when he visited the Crawdaddy Club, he decided he'd found them. Oldham knew nothing about R&B, didn't like it, and didn't care -- he liked pure pop music, and he wanted to be Britain's answer to Phil Spector. But he knew charisma when he saw it, and the group on stage had it. He immediately decided he was going to sign them as a manager. However, he needed a partner in order to get them bookings -- at the time in Britain you needed an agent's license to get bookings, and you needed to be twenty-one to get the license. He first offered Brian Epstein the chance to co-manage them -- even though he'd not even talked to the group about it. Epstein said he had enough on his plate already managing the Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and his other Liverpool groups. At that point Oldham quit his job with Epstein and looked for another partner. He found one in Eric Easton, an agent of the old school who had started out as a music-hall organ player before moving over to the management side and whose big clients were Bert Weedon and Mrs. Mills, and who was letting Oldham use a spare room in his office as a base. Oldham persuaded Easton to come to the Crawdaddy Club, though Easton was dubious as it meant missing Sunday Night at the London Palladium on the TV, but Easton agreed that the group had promise -- though he wanted to get rid of the singer, which Oldham talked him out of. The two talked with Brian Jones, who agreed, as the group's leader, that they would sign with Oldham and Easton. Easton brought traditional entertainment industry experience, while Oldham brought an understanding of how to market pop groups. Jones, as the group's leader, negotiated an extra five pounds a week for himself off the top in the deal. One piece of advice that Oldham had been given by Phil Spector and which he'd taken to heart was that rather than get a band signed to a record label directly, you should set up an independent production company and lease the tapes to the label, and that's what Oldham and Easton did. They formed a company called Impact, and went into the studio with the Stones and recorded the song they performed which they thought had the most commercial potential, a Chuck Berry song called "Come On" -- though they changed Berry's line about a "stupid jerk" to being about a "stupid guy", in order to make sure the radio would play it: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Come On"] During the recording, Oldham, who was acting as producer, told the engineer not to mic up the piano. His plans didn't include Ian Stewart. Neither the group nor Oldham were particularly happy with the record -- the group because they felt it was too poppy, Oldham because it wasn't poppy enough. But they took the recording to Decca Records, where Dick Rowe, the man who had turned down the Beatles, eagerly signed them. The conventional story is that Rowe signed them after being told about them by George Harrison, but the other details of the story as it's usually told -- that they were judging a talent contest in Liverpool, which is the story in most Stones biographies, or that they were appearing together on Juke Box Jury, which is what Wikipedia and articles ripped off from Wikipedia say -- are false, and so it's likely that the story is made up. Decca wanted the Stones to rerecord the track, but after going to another studio with Easton instead of Oldham producing, the general consensus was that the first version should be released. The group got new suits for their first TV appearance, and it was when they turned up to collect the suits and found there were only five of them, not six, that Ian Stewart discovered Oldham had had him kicked out of the group, thinking he was too old and too ugly, and that six people was too many for a pop group. Stewart was given the news by Brian Jones, and never really forgave either Jones or Oldham, but he remained loyal to the rest of the group. He became their road manager, and would continue to play piano with them on stage and in the studio for the next twenty-two years, until his death -- he just wasn't allowed in the photos or any TV appearances. That wasn't the only change Oldham made -- he insisted that the group be called the Rolling Stones, with a g, not Rollin'. He also changed Keith Richards' surname, dropping the s to be more like Cliff, though Richards later changed it back again. "Come On" made number twenty-one in the charts, but the band were unsure of what to do as a follow-up single. Most of their repertoire consisted of hard blues songs, which were unlikely to have any chart success. Oldham convened the group for a rehearsal and they ran through possible songs -- nothing seemed right. Oldham got depressed and went out for a walk, and happened to bump into John Lennon and Paul McCartney. They asked him what was up, and he explained that the group needed a song. Lennon and McCartney said they thought they could help, and came back to the rehearsal studio with Oldham. They played the Stones an idea that McCartney had been working on, which they thought might be OK for the group. The group said it would work, and Lennon and McCartney retreated to a corner, finished the song, and presented it to them. The result became the Stones' second single, and another hit for them, this time reaching number twelve. The second single was produced by Easton, as Oldham, who is bipolar, was in a depressive phase and had gone off on holiday to try to get out of it: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "I Wanna Be Your Man"] The Beatles later recorded their own version of the song as an album track, giving it to Ringo to sing -- as Lennon said of the song, "We weren't going to give them anything great, were we?": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Wanna Be Your Man"] For a B-side, the group did a song called "Stoned", which was clearly "inspired" by "Green Onions": [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Stoned"] That was credited to a group pseudonym, Nanker Phelge -- Nanker after a particular face that Jones and Richards enjoyed pulling, and Phelge after a flatmate of several of the band members, James Phelge. As it was an original, by at least some definitions of the term original, it needed publishing, and Easton got the group signed to a publishing company with whom he had a deal, without consulting Oldham about it. When Oldham got back, he was furious, and that was the beginning of the end of Easton's time with the group. But it was also the beginning of something else, because Oldham had had a realisation -- if you're going to make records you need songs, and you can't just expect to bump into Lennon and McCartney every time you need a new single. No, the Rolling Stones were going to have to have some originals, and Andrew Loog Oldham was going to make them into writers. We'll see how that went in a few weeks' time, when we pick up on their career.
Episode 108 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Wanna Be Your Man” by the Rolling Stones and how the British blues scene of the early sixties was started by a trombone player. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have an eight-minute bonus episode available, on “The Monkey Time” by Major Lance. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. i used a lot of resources for this episode. Information on Chris Barber comes from Jazz Me Blues: The Autobiography of Chris Barber by Barber and Alyn Shopton. Information on Alexis Korner comes from Alexis Korner: The Biography by Harry Shapiro. Two resources that I’ve used for this and all future Stones episodes — The Rolling Stones: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesden is an invaluable reference book, while Old Gods Almost Dead by Stephen Davis is the least inaccurate biography. I’ve also used Andrew Loog Oldham’s autobiography Stoned, and Keith Richards’ Life, though be warned that both casually use slurs. This compilation contains Alexis Korner’s pre-1963 electric blues material, while this contains the earlier skiffle and country blues music. The live performances by Chris Barber and various blues legends I’ve used here come from volumes one and two of a three-CD series of these recordings. And this three-CD set contains the A and B sides of all the Stones’ singles up to 1971. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we’re going to look at a group who, more than any other band of the sixties, sum up what “rock music” means to most people. This is all the more surprising as when they started out they were vehemently opposed to being referred to as “rock and roll”. We’re going to look at the London blues scene of the early sixties, and how a music scene that was made up of people who thought of themselves as scholars of obscure music, going against commercialism ended up creating some of the most popular and commercial music ever made. We’re going to look at the Rolling Stones, and at “I Wanna Be Your Man”: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, “I Wanna Be Your Man”] The Rolling Stones’ story doesn’t actually start with the Rolling Stones, and they won’t be appearing until quite near the end of this episode, because to explain how they formed, I have to explain the British blues scene that they formed in. One of the things people asked me when I first started doing the podcast was why I didn’t cover people like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf in the early episodes — after all, most people now think that rock and roll started with those artists. It didn’t, as I hope the last hundred or so episodes have shown. But those artists did become influential on its development, and that influence happened largely because of one man, Chris Barber. We’ve seen Barber before, in a couple of episodes, but this, even more than his leading the band that brought Lonnie Donegan to fame, is where his influence on popular music really changes everything. On the face of it, Chris Barber seems like the last person in the world who one would expect to be responsible, at least indirectly, for some of the most rebellious popular music ever made. He is a trombone player from a background that is about as solidly respectable as one can imagine — his parents were introduced to each other by the economist John Maynard Keynes, and his father, another economist, was not only offered a knighthood for his war work (he turned it down but accepted a CBE), but Clement Atlee later offered him a safe seat in Parliament if he wanted to become Chancellor of the Exchequer. But when the war started, young Chris Barber started listening to the Armed Forces Network, and became hooked on jazz. By the time the war ended, when he was fifteen, he owned records by Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton and more — records that were almost impossible to find in the Britain of the 1940s. And along with the jazz records, he was also getting hold of blues records by people like Cow Cow Davenport and Sleepy John Estes: [Excerpt: Sleepy John Estes, “Milk Cow Blues”] In his late teens and early twenties, Barber had become Britain’s pre-eminent traditional jazz trombonist — a position he held until he retired last year, aged eighty-nine — but he wasn’t just interested in trad jazz, but in all of American roots music, which is why he’d ended up accidentally kick-starting the skiffle craze when his guitarist recorded an old Lead Belly song as a track on a Barber album, as we looked at back in the episode on “Rock Island Line”. If that had been Barber’s only contribution to British rock and roll, he would still have been important — after all, without “Rock Island Line”, it’s likely that you could have counted the number of British boys who played guitar in the fifties and sixties on a single hand. But he did far more than that. In the mid to late fifties, Barber became one of the biggest stars in British music. He didn’t have a breakout chart hit until 1959, when he released “Petit Fleur”, engineered by Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Chris Barber, “Petit Fleur”] And Barber didn’t even play on that – it was a clarinet solo by his clarinettist Monty Sunshine. But long before this big chart success he was a huge live draw and made regular appearances on TV and radio, and he was hugely appreciated among music lovers. A parallel for his status in the music world in the more modern era might be someone like, say, Radiohead — a band who aren’t releasing number one singles, but who have a devoted fanbase and are more famous than many of those acts who do have regular hits. And that celebrity status put Barber in a position to do something that changed music forever. Because he desperately wanted to play with his American musical heroes, and he was one of the few people in Britain with the kind of built-in audience that he could bring over obscure Black musicians, some of whom had never even had a record released over here, and get them on stage with him. And he brought over, in particular, blues musicians. Now, just as there was a split in the British jazz community between those who liked traditional Dixieland jazz and those who liked modern jazz, there was a similar split in their tastes in blues and R&B. Those who liked modern jazz — a music that was dominated by saxophones and piano — unsurprisingly liked modern keyboard and saxophone-based R&B. Their R&B idol was Ray Charles, whose music was the closest of the great R&B stars to modern jazz, and one stream of the British R&B movement of the sixties came from this scene — people like the Spencer Davis Group, Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, and Manfred Mann all come from this modernist scene. But the trad people, when they listened to blues, liked music that sounded primitive to them, just as they liked primitive-sounding jazz. Their tastes were very heavily influenced by Alan Lomax — who came to the UK for a crucial period in the fifties to escape McCarthyism — and they paralleled those of the American folk scene that Lomax was also part of, and followed the same narrative that Lomax’s friend John Hammond had constructed for his Spirituals to Swing concerts, where the Delta country blues of people like Robert Johnson had been the basis for both jazz and boogie piano. This entirely false narrative became the received wisdom among the trad scene in Britain, to the extent that two of the very few people in the world who had actually heard Robert Johnson records before the release of the King of the Delta Blues Singers album were Chris Barber and his sometime guitarist and banjo player Alexis Korner. These people liked Robert Johnson, Big Bill Broonzy, Lead Belly, and Lonnie Johnson’s early recordings before his later pop success. They liked solo male performers who played guitar. These two scenes were geographically close — the Flamingo Club, a modern jazz club that later became the place where Georgie Fame and Chris Farlowe built their audiences, was literally across the road from the Marquee, a trad jazz club that became the centre of guitar-based R&B in the UK. And there wasn’t a perfect hard-and-fast split, as we’ll see — but it’s generally true that what is nowadays portrayed as a single British “blues scene” was, in its early days, two overlapping but distinct scenes, based in a pre-existing split in the jazz world. Barber was, of course, part of the traditional jazz wing, and indeed he was so influential a part of it that his tastes shaped the tastes of the whole scene to a large extent. But Barber was not as much of a purist as someone like his former collaborator Ken Colyer, who believed that jazz had become corrupted in 1922 by the evil innovations of people like Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson, who were too modern for his tastes. Barber had preferences, but he could appreciate — and more importantly play — music in a variety of styles. So Barber started by bringing over Big Bill Broonzy, who John Hammond had got to perform at the Spirituals to Swing concerts when he’d found out Robert Johnson was dead. It was because of Barber bringing Broonzy over that Broonzy got to record with Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, “When Do I Get to Be Called a Man?”] And it was because of Barber bringing Broonzy over that Broonzy appeared on Six-Five Special, along with Tommy Steele, the Vipers, and Mike and Bernie Winters, and thus became the first blues musician that an entire generation of British musicians saw, their template for what a blues musician is. If you watch the Beatles Anthology, for example, in the sections where they talk about the music they were listening to as teenagers, Broonzy is the only blues musician specifically named. That’s because of Chris Barber. Broonzy toured with Barber several times in the fifties, before his death in 1958, but he wasn’t the only one. Barber brought over many people to perform and record with him, including several we’ve looked at previously. Like the rock and roll stars who visited the UK at this time, these were generally people who were past their commercial peak in the US, but who were fantastic live performers. The Barber band did recording sessions with Louis Jordan: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan and the Chris Barber band, “Tain’t Nobody’s Business”] And we’re lucky enough that many of the Barber band’s shows at the Manchester Free Trade Hall (a venue that would later host two hugely important shows we’ll talk about in later episodes) were recorded and have since been released. With those recordings we can hear them backing Sister Rosetta Tharpe: [Excerpt: Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the Chris Barber band, “Peace in the Valley”] Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee: [Excerpt: Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee and the Chris Barber band, “This Little Light of Mine”] And others like Champion Jack Dupree and Sonny Boy Williamson. But there was one particular blues musician that Barber brought over who changed everything for British music. Barber was a member of an organisation called the National Jazz Federation, which helped arrange transatlantic musician exchanges. You might remember that at the time there was a rule imposed by the musicians’ unions in the UK and the US that the only way for an American musician to play the UK was if a British musician played the US and vice versa, and the National Jazz Federation helped set these exchanges up. Through the NJF Barber had become friendly with John Lewis, the American pianist who led the Modern Jazz Quartet, and was talking with Lewis about what other musicians he could bring over, and Lewis suggested Muddy Waters. Barber said that would be great, but he had no idea how you’d reach Muddy Waters — did you send a postcard to the plantation he worked on or something? Lewis laughed, and said that no, Muddy Waters had a Cadillac and an agent. The reason for Barber’s confusion was fairly straightfoward — Barber was thinking of Waters’ early recordings, which he knew because of the influence of Alan Lomax. Lomax had discovered Muddy Waters back in 1941. He’d travelled to Clarksdale, Mississippi hoping to record Robert Johnson for the Library of Congress — apparently he didn’t know, or had forgotten, that Johnson had died a few years earlier. When he couldn’t find Johnson, he’d found another musician, who had a similar style, and recorded him instead. Waters was a working musician who would play whatever people wanted to listen to — Gene Autry songs, Glenn Miller, whatever — but who was particularly proficient in blues, influenced by Son House, the same person who had been Johnson’s biggest influence. Lomax recorded him playing acoustic blues on a plantation, and those recordings were put out by the Library of Congress: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, “I Be’s Troubled”] Those Library of Congress recordings had been hugely influential among the trad and skiffle scenes — Lonnie Donegan, in particular, had borrowed a copy from the American Embassy’s record-lending library and then stolen it because he liked it so much. But after making those recordings, Waters had travelled up to Chicago and gone electric, forming a band with guitarist Jimmie Rodgers (not the same person as the country singer of the same name, or the 50s pop star), harmonica player Little Walter, drummer Elgin Evans, and pianist Otis Spann. Waters had signed to Chess Records, then still named Aristocrat, in 1947, and had started out by recording electric versions of the same material he’d been performing acoustically: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, “I Can’t Be Satisfied”] But soon he’d partnered with Chess’ great bass player, songwriter, and producer Willie Dixon, who wrote a string of blues classics both for Waters and for Chess’ other big star Howlin’ Wolf. Throughout the early fifties, Waters had a series of hits on the R&B charts with his electric blues records, like the great “Hoochie Coochie Man”, which introduced one of the most copied blues riffs ever: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, “Hoochie Coochie Man”] But by the late fifties, the hits had started to dry up. Waters was still making great records, but Chess were more interested in artists like Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and the Moonglows, who were selling much more and were having big pop hits, not medium-sized R&B ones. So Waters and his pianist Otis Spann were eager to come over to the UK, and Barber was eager to perform with them. Luckily, unlike many of his trad contemporaries, Barber was comfortable with electric music, and his band quickly learned Waters’ current repertoire. Waters came over and played one night at a festival with a different band, made up of modern jazz players who didn’t really fit his style before joining the Barber tour, and so he and Spann were a little worried on their first night with the group when they heard these Dixieland trombones and clarinets. But as soon as the group blasted out the riff of “Hoochie Coochie Man” to introduce their guests, Waters and Spann’s faces lit up — they knew these were musicians they could play with, and they fit in with Barber’s band perfectly: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, and the Chris Barber band, “Hoochie Coochie Man”] Not everyone watching the tour was as happy as Barber with the electric blues though — the audiences were often bemused by the electric guitars, which they associated with rock and roll rather than the blues. Waters, like many of his contemporaries, was perfectly willing to adapt his performance to the audience, and so the next time he came over he brought his acoustic guitar and played more in the country acoustic style they expected. The time after that he came over, though, the audiences were disappointed, because he was playing acoustic, and now they wanted and expected him to be playing electric Chicago blues. Because Muddy Waters’ first UK tour had developed a fanbase for him, and that fanbase had been cultivated and grown by one man, who had started off playing in the same band as Chris Barber. Alexis Korner had started out in the Ken Colyer band, the same band that Chris Barber had started out in, as a replacement for Lonnie Donegan when Donegan was conscripted. After Donegan had rejoined the band, they’d played together for a while, and the first ever British skiffle group lineup had been Ken and Bill Colyer, Korner, Donegan, and Barber. When the Colyers had left the group and Barber had taken it over, Korner had gone with the Colyers, mostly because he didn’t like the fact that Donegan was introducing country and folk elements into skiffle, while Korner liked the blues. As a result, Korner had sung and played on the very first ever British skiffle record, the Ken Colyer group’s version of “Midnight Special”: [Excerpt: The Ken Colyer Skiffle Group, “Midnight Special”] After that, Korner had also backed Beryl Bryden on some skiffle recordings, which also featured a harmonica player named Cyril Davies: [Excerpt: Beryl Bryden Skiffle Group, “This Train”] But Korner and Davies had soon got sick of skiffle as it developed — they liked the blues music that formed its basis, but Korner had never been a fan of Lonnie Donegan’s singing — he’d even said as much in the liner notes to an album by the Barber band while both he and Donegan were still in the band — and what Donegan saw as eclecticism, including Woody Guthrie songs and old English music-hall songs, Korner saw as watering down the music. Korner and Donegan had a war of words in the pages of Melody Maker, at that time the biggest jazz periodical in Britain. Korner started with an article headlined “Skiffle is Piffle”, in which he said in part: “It is with shame and considerable regret that I have to admit my part as one of the originators of the movement…British skiffle is, most certainly, a commercial success. But musically it rarely exceeds the mediocre and is, in general, so abysmally low that it defies proper musical judgment”. Donegan replied pointing out that Korner was playing in a skiffle group himself, and then Korner replied to that, saying that what he was doing now wasn’t skiffle, it was the blues. You can judge for yourself whether the “Blues From the Roundhouse” EP, by Alexis Korner’s Breakdown Group, which featured Korner, Davies on guitar and harmonica, plus teachest bass and washboard, was skiffle or blues: [Excerpt: Alexis Korner’s Breakdown Group, “Skip to My Lou”] But soon Korner and Davies had changed their group’s name to Blues Incorporated, and were recording something that was much closer to the Delta and Chicago blues Davies in particular liked. [Excerpt: Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated feat. Cyril Davies, “Death Letter”] But after the initial recordings, Blues Incorporated stopped being a thing for a while, as Korner got more involved with the folk scene. At a party hosted by Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, he met the folk guitarist Davey Graham, who had previously lived in the same squat as Lionel Bart, Tommy Steele’s lyricist, if that gives some idea of how small and interlocked the London music scene actually was at this time, for all its factional differences. Korner and Graham formed a guitar duo playing jazzy folk music for a while: [Excerpt: Alexis Korner and Davey Graham, “3/4 AD”] But in 1960, after Chris Barber had done a second tour with Muddy Waters, Barber decided that he needed to make Muddy Waters style blues a regular part of his shows. Barber had entered into a partnership with an accountant, Harold Pendleton, who was secretary of the National Jazz Federation. They co-owned a club, the Marquee, which Pendleton managed, and they were about to start up an annual jazz festival, the Richmond festival, which would eventually grow into the Reading Festival, the second-biggest rock festival in Britain. Barber had a residency at the Marquee, and he wanted to introduce a blues segment into the shows there. He had a singer — his wife, Ottilie Patterson, who was an excellent singer in the Bessie Smith mould — and he got a couple of members of his band to back her on some Chicago-style blues songs in the intervals of his shows. He asked Korner to be a part of this interval band, and after a little while it was decided that Korner would form the first ever British electric blues band, which would take over those interval slots, and so Blues Incorporated was reformed, with Cyril Davies rejoining Korner. The first time this group played together, in the first week of 1962, it was Korner on electric guitar, Davies on harmonica, and Chris Barber plus Barber’s trumpet player Pat Halcox, but they soon lost the Barber band members. The group was called Blues Incorporated because they were meant to be semi-anonymous — the idea was that people might join just for a show, or just for a few songs, and they never had the same lineup from one show to the next. For example, their classic album R&B From The Marquee, which wasn’t actually recorded at the Marquee, and was produced by Jack Good, features Korner, Davies, sax player Dick Heckstall-Smith, Keith Scott on piano, Spike Heatley on bass, Graham Burbridge on drums, and Long John Baldry on vocals: [Excerpt: Blues Incorporated, “How Long How Long Blues”] But Burbridge wasn’t their regular drummer — that was a modern jazz player named Charlie Watts. And they had a lot of singers. Baldry was one of their regulars, as was Art Wood (who had a brother, Ronnie, who wasn’t yet involved with these players). When Charlie quit the band, because it was taking up too much of his time, he was replaced with another drummer, Ginger Baker. When Spike Heatley left the band, Dick Heckstall-Smith brought in a new bass player, Jack Bruce. Sometimes a young man called Eric Clapton would get up on stage for a number or two, though he wouldn’t bring his guitar, he’d just sing with them. So would a singer and harmonica player named Paul Jones, later the singer with Manfred Mann, who first travelled down to see the group with a friend of his, a guitarist named Brian Jones, no relation, who would also sit in with the band on guitar, playing Elmore James numbers under the name Elmo Lewis. A young man named Rodney Stewart would sometimes join in for a number or two. And one time Eric Burdon hitch-hiked down from Newcastle to get a chance to sing with the group. He jumped onto the stage when it got to the point in the show that Korner asked for singers from the audience, and so did a skinny young man. Korner diplomatically suggested that they sing a duet, and they agreed on a Billy Boy Arnold number. At the end of the song Korner introduced them — “Eric Burdon from Newcastle, this is Mick Jagger”. Mick Jagger was a middle-class student, studying at the London School of Economics, one of the most prestigious British universities. He soon became a regular guest vocalist with Blues Incorporated, appearing at almost every show. Soon after, Davies left the group — he wanted to play strictly Chicago style blues, but Korner wanted to play other types of R&B. The final straw for Davies came when Korner brought in Graham Bond on Hammond organ — it was bad enough that they had a saxophone player, but Hammond was a step too far. Sometimes Jagger would bring on a guitar-playing friend for a song or two — they’d play a Chuck Berry song, to Davies’ disapproval. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had known each other at primary school, but had fallen out of touch for years. Then one day they’d bumped into each other at a train station, and Richards had noticed two albums under Jagger’s arm — one by Muddy Waters and one by Chuck Berry, both of which he’d ordered specially from Chess Records in Chicago because they weren’t out in the UK yet. They’d bonded over their love for Berry and Bo Diddley, in particular, and had soon formed a band themselves, Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, with a friend, Dick Taylor, and had made some home recordings of rock and roll and R&B music: [Excerpt: Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, “Beautiful Delilah”] Meanwhile, Brian Jones, the slide player with the Elmore James obsession, decided he wanted to create his own band, who were to be called The Rollin’ Stones, named after a favourite Muddy Waters track of his. He got together with Ian Stewart, a piano player who answered an ad in Jazz News magazine. Stewart had very different musical tastes to Jones — Jones liked Elmore James and Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf and especially Jimmy Reed, and very little else, just electric Chicago blues. Stewart was older, and liked boogie piano like Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson, and jump band R&B like Wynonie Harris and Louis Jordan, but he could see that Jones had potential. They tried to get Charlie Watts to join the band, but he refused at first, so they played with a succession of other drummers, starting with Mick Avory. And they needed a singer, and Jones thought that Mick Jagger had genuine star potential. Jagger agreed to join, but only if his mates Dick and Keith could join the band. Jones was a little hesitant — Mick Jagger was a real blues scholar like him, but he did have a tendency to listen to this rock and roll nonsense rather than proper blues, and Keith seemed even less of a blues purist than that. He probably even listened to Elvis. Dick, meanwhile, was an unknown quantity. But eventually Jones agreed — though Richards remembers turning up to the first rehearsal and being astonished by Stewart’s piano playing, only for Stewart to then turn around to him and say sarcastically “and you must be the Chuck Berry artist”. Their first gig was at the Marquee, in place of Blues Incorporated, who were doing a BBC session and couldn’t make their regular gig. Taylor and Avory soon left, and they went through a succession of bass players and drummers, played several small gigs, and also recorded a demo, which had no success in getting them a deal: [Excerpt: The Rollin’ Stones, “You Can’t Judge a Book By its Cover”] By this point, Jones, Richards, and Jagger were all living together, in a flat which has become legendary for its squalour. Jones was managing the group (and pocketing some of the money for himself) and Jones and Richards were spending all day every day playing guitar together, developing an interlocking style in which both could switch from rhythm to lead as the song demanded. Tony Chapman, the drummer they had at the time, brought in a friend of his, Bill Wyman, as bass player — they didn’t like him very much, he was older than the rest of them and seemed to have a bad attitude, and their initial idea was just to get him to leave his equipment with them and then nick it — he had a really good amplifier that they wanted — but they eventually decided to keep him in the band. They kept pressuring Charlie Watts to join and replace Chapman, and eventually, after talking it over with Alexis Korner’s wife Bobbie, he decided to give it a shot, and joined in early 1963. Watts and Wyman quickly gelled as a rhythm section with a unique style — Watts would play jazz-inspired shuffles, while Wyman would play fast, throbbing, quavers. The Rollin’ Stones were now a six-person group, and they were good. They got a residency at a new club run by Giorgio Gomelsky, a trad jazz promoter who was branching out into R&B. Gomelsky named his club the Crawdaddy Club, after the Bo Diddley song that the Stones ended their sets with. Soon, as well as playing the Crawdaddy every Sunday night, they were playing Ken Colyer’s club, Studio 51, on the other side of London every Sunday evening, so Ian Stewart bought a van to lug all their gear around. Gomelsky thought of himself as the group’s manager, though he didn’t have a formal contract, but Jones disagreed and considered himself the manager, though he never told Gomelsky this. Jones booked the group in at the IBC studios, where they cut a professional demo with Glyn Johns engineering, consisting mostly of Bo Diddley and Jimmy Reed songs: [Excerpt: The Rollin’ Stones, “Diddley Daddy”] Gomelsky started getting the group noticed. He even got the Beatles to visit the club and see the group, and the two bands hit it off — even though John Lennon had no time for Chicago blues, he liked them as people, and would sometimes pop round to the flat where most of the group lived, once finding Mick and Keith in bed together because they didn’t have any money to heat the flat. The group’s live performances were so good that the Record Mirror, which as its name suggested only normally talked about records, did an article on the group. And the magazine’s editor, Peter Jones, raved about them to an acquaintance of his, Andrew Loog Oldham. Oldham was a young man, only nineteen, but he’d already managed to get himself a variety of jobs around and with famous people, mostly by bluffing and conning them into giving him work. He’d worked for Mary Quant, the designer who’d popularised the miniskirt, and then had become a freelance publicist, working with Bob Dylan and Phil Spector on their trips to the UK, and with a succession of minor British pop stars. Most recently, he’d taken a job working with Brian Epstein as the Beatles’ London press agent. But he wanted his own Beatles, and when he visited the Crawdaddy Club, he decided he’d found them. Oldham knew nothing about R&B, didn’t like it, and didn’t care — he liked pure pop music, and he wanted to be Britain’s answer to Phil Spector. But he knew charisma when he saw it, and the group on stage had it. He immediately decided he was going to sign them as a manager. However, he needed a partner in order to get them bookings — at the time in Britain you needed an agent’s license to get bookings, and you needed to be twenty-one to get the license. He first offered Brian Epstein the chance to co-manage them — even though he’d not even talked to the group about it. Epstein said he had enough on his plate already managing the Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and his other Liverpool groups. At that point Oldham quit his job with Epstein and looked for another partner. He found one in Eric Easton, an agent of the old school who had started out as a music-hall organ player before moving over to the management side and whose big clients were Bert Weedon and Mrs. Mills, and who was letting Oldham use a spare room in his office as a base. Oldham persuaded Easton to come to the Crawdaddy Club, though Easton was dubious as it meant missing Sunday Night at the London Palladium on the TV, but Easton agreed that the group had promise — though he wanted to get rid of the singer, which Oldham talked him out of. The two talked with Brian Jones, who agreed, as the group’s leader, that they would sign with Oldham and Easton. Easton brought traditional entertainment industry experience, while Oldham brought an understanding of how to market pop groups. Jones, as the group’s leader, negotiated an extra five pounds a week for himself off the top in the deal. One piece of advice that Oldham had been given by Phil Spector and which he’d taken to heart was that rather than get a band signed to a record label directly, you should set up an independent production company and lease the tapes to the label, and that’s what Oldham and Easton did. They formed a company called Impact, and went into the studio with the Stones and recorded the song they performed which they thought had the most commercial potential, a Chuck Berry song called “Come On” — though they changed Berry’s line about a “stupid jerk” to being about a “stupid guy”, in order to make sure the radio would play it: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, “Come On”] During the recording, Oldham, who was acting as producer, told the engineer not to mic up the piano. His plans didn’t include Ian Stewart. Neither the group nor Oldham were particularly happy with the record — the group because they felt it was too poppy, Oldham because it wasn’t poppy enough. But they took the recording to Decca Records, where Dick Rowe, the man who had turned down the Beatles, eagerly signed them. The conventional story is that Rowe signed them after being told about them by George Harrison, but the other details of the story as it’s usually told — that they were judging a talent contest in Liverpool, which is the story in most Stones biographies, or that they were appearing together on Juke Box Jury, which is what Wikipedia and articles ripped off from Wikipedia say — are false, and so it’s likely that the story is made up. Decca wanted the Stones to rerecord the track, but after going to another studio with Easton instead of Oldham producing, the general consensus was that the first version should be released. The group got new suits for their first TV appearance, and it was when they turned up to collect the suits and found there were only five of them, not six, that Ian Stewart discovered Oldham had had him kicked out of the group, thinking he was too old and too ugly, and that six people was too many for a pop group. Stewart was given the news by Brian Jones, and never really forgave either Jones or Oldham, but he remained loyal to the rest of the group. He became their road manager, and would continue to play piano with them on stage and in the studio for the next twenty-two years, until his death — he just wasn’t allowed in the photos or any TV appearances. That wasn’t the only change Oldham made — he insisted that the group be called the Rolling Stones, with a g, not Rollin’. He also changed Keith Richards’ surname, dropping the s to be more like Cliff, though Richards later changed it back again. “Come On” made number twenty-one in the charts, but the band were unsure of what to do as a follow-up single. Most of their repertoire consisted of hard blues songs, which were unlikely to have any chart success. Oldham convened the group for a rehearsal and they ran through possible songs — nothing seemed right. Oldham got depressed and went out for a walk, and happened to bump into John Lennon and Paul McCartney. They asked him what was up, and he explained that the group needed a song. Lennon and McCartney said they thought they could help, and came back to the rehearsal studio with Oldham. They played the Stones an idea that McCartney had been working on, which they thought might be OK for the group. The group said it would work, and Lennon and McCartney retreated to a corner, finished the song, and presented it to them. The result became the Stones’ second single, and another hit for them, this time reaching number twelve. The second single was produced by Easton, as Oldham, who is bipolar, was in a depressive phase and had gone off on holiday to try to get out of it: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, “I Wanna Be Your Man”] The Beatles later recorded their own version of the song as an album track, giving it to Ringo to sing — as Lennon said of the song, “We weren’t going to give them anything great, were we?”: [Excerpt: The Beatles, “I Wanna Be Your Man”] For a B-side, the group did a song called “Stoned”, which was clearly “inspired” by “Green Onions”: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, “Stoned”] That was credited to a group pseudonym, Nanker Phelge — Nanker after a particular face that Jones and Richards enjoyed pulling, and Phelge after a flatmate of several of the band members, James Phelge. As it was an original, by at least some definitions of the term original, it needed publishing, and Easton got the group signed to a publishing company with whom he had a deal, without consulting Oldham about it. When Oldham got back, he was furious, and that was the beginning of the end of Easton’s time with the group. But it was also the beginning of something else, because Oldham had had a realisation — if you’re going to make records you need songs, and you can’t just expect to bump into Lennon and McCartney every time you need a new single. No, the Rolling Stones were going to have to have some originals, and Andrew Loog Oldham was going to make them into writers. We’ll see how that went in a few weeks’ time, when we pick up on their career.
Episode 108 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Wanna Be Your Man” by the Rolling Stones and how the British blues scene of the early sixties was started by a trombone player. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have an eight-minute bonus episode available, on “The Monkey Time” by Major Lance. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)
Episode 108 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Wanna Be Your Man” by the Rolling Stones and how the British blues scene of the early sixties was started by a trombone player. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have an eight-minute bonus episode available, on “The Monkey Time” by Major Lance. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)
La música negra en 1970: cara a cara con la verdad, como rezó el título del disco de The Undisputed Truth. La verdad indiscutible de la guerra de Vietnam. La lucha de los artistas afroamericanos por los Derechos Civiles… Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, The Staple Swingers ya estaban preguntando “Qué está pasando”… El género “jazz-fussion” ya es más una realidad gracias a músicas que están experimentando con los sintetizadores y el cruce de la herencia jazz con las nuevas corrientes del soul y del funk. Shuggie Otis, hijo de Johnny, Eugene McDaniels, Sun Ra, Pharaoh Sanders están adelantándose a su tiempo. DISCO 1 MIKE KNOCK UNDERGROUND Space Bugaloo (SPACED OUT JAZZ - 7) DISCO 2 STEVIE WONDER Signed, Sealed And Delivered (18) Signed, Sealed And Delivered DISCO 3 ARETHA FRANKLIN Don’t Play That Song (1) Spirit In The Dark DISCO 4 DIANA ROSS Everything Is Everything (Cara 1 Corte 1) DISCO 5 MARVIN GAYE That’s The Way Love Is (18) That’s The Way Love Is DISCO 6 THE STAPLE SWINGERS This A Perfect World (1) The Staple Swingers DISCO 7 THE ISLEY BROTHERS Get Into Something (1) DISCO 8 THE IMPRESSIONS Ain't Got Time (THE CURTOM STORY Disc 2 - 3) DISCO 9 MOSES DILLARD & Tex-Town Display I've Got To Find A Way (Pt.1) (THE CURTOM STORY Disc 1 - 25) DISCO 10 MAJOR LANCE Must Be Love Coming Down (THE CURTOM STORY - Disc 2 - 2) DISCO 11 SHUGGIE OTIS Strawberry Letter 23 (12) Here Comes Shuggie Otis DISCO 12 THE ORIGINALS My way (MOTOWN SINATRA - 15) DISCO 13 EUGENE McDANIELS Headless Heroes (4) DISCO 14 GABOR SZABO Breezin’ (ALL DAY THUMBSUCKER - CD 2 - 10) DISCO 15 LAURA NYRO When I was a freeport…(GARDOT - 6) CHRISTMAS AND THE BEADS OF SWEAT Escuchar audio
Too many Batmobiles, MSP shooting in Monroe County, Frank Biden's trail of disaster, we're not getting sports anytime soon, ticketed for a fart, new Cameos, and #unblockmarcfell is failing.The United States of A**holes is super bummed out.Monkeemobile Mel vs Kevin Adell: Too many Batmobiles Edition.Amazon's customer service might need improving, but not as much as eBay.A dude has been punished in Austria for "weaponizing" a fart aimed at police.GoFundMe seems to never be concerned about the legitimacy of the fundraisers on their site.Rodney King was a likable guy, but had his struggles. The housing market is doing well despite 2020 being the worst. Don't forget to hit up Hall Financial!Marc Fellhauer's campaign to be unblocked by the Detroit Zoo is chugging along. Also, Marc has 10,000 followers on Twitter now. Congrats.The MLB is a mess. We need to get back to the good old days of 'roids and crying announcers.Emagine Royal Oak is defying state orders and opening up a film festival on Juneteenth. Who wants to tell them? Mike Duggan listens to the podcast and will be moving the Christopher Columbus statue in storage.Michigan has their own police shooting amid protests across the nation after a Michigan State Trooper shot a man rushing the officer with a knife.Armed skateboarders are tearing down statues, but people are trying to protect them with guns.There's no update on the two cops that were blasted by the SUV in Buffalo. The 75-year-old "ANTIFA provocateur" that was pushed down in Buffalo has a fractured skull and still hasn't been able to stand on his own since the incident.Drew loves Atlanta mayor Keisha Bottoms. FYI, her dad was singer Major Lance.The NYPD union claimed that Shake Shack poisoned 3 officers with bleach, but the NYPD investigated and said Shake Shack didn't do anything intentional. The cops have recovered and now we all want shakes.Manscaped brings you a brand spanking new Bonerline.Cameo has a ton of new celebrities ranging from our favorite TMZ star to our least favorite 1990's Country music star.Roger Goodell totally loves Colin Kaepernick now.Kyrie Irving (and some other basketball player named Dwight Howard) would prefer protesting to having an NBA season. Frank Biden knows three things- how to capitalize on his last name, how to separate people from their money, and how to leave things worse than how he found them.Donald Trump has his own family drama as niece, Mary, is writing a bombshell tell-all book.PSA: Milana Vayntrub is smoking hot and John Mayer dated her.Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (Drew and Mike Show, Marc Fellhauer, Trudi Daniels and BranDon).
La soul a l' état pure. BARABAS, OTIS READDING ,WILSON PICKET, MARVIN GAYE,FIVE HEARTBEAT,MAJOR LANCE, GEORGES MC RAE,SILK,TEMPTATION.... YANN BUTLER
This week, we feature a Top 7 from long-time listener, Garry Leonard. We also play tracks by artists such as Major Lance, The Dramatics, Masqueraders, Jerry Butler and Jack Ashford!New broadcasts of Dab Of Soul every Tuesday from 6 - 8 PM EST / 11 PM - 1 AM GMT (Wednesday).For a complete track listing, visit: https://thefaceradio.com Facebook: Dab Of Soul (Group)Mixcloud: dabofsoulEmail: dabofsoul@thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
With Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers, Elvis Presley, Brenda Lee, Major Lance, Neil Sedaka, The Clovers... Goody Goody and King Creole get us started this week, a comeback hit for Miss Dynamite and our twin spin this week is former Dovell singer Len Barry "1-2-3" and its b-side "Bullseye" for the class of '65.
The Saturday edition features tuneage from Bob Dylan,Warren Zevon, Willie Nile, Bruce Springsteen, Jay Ferguson, Van Morrison, Police, Rolling Stones, J.Geils, Aerosmith, Billy Squier, Black Crowes, Bob Seger, Mott The Hoople, David Bowie, T. Rex, Led Zeppelin, Conception Corporation, Fraternity Of Man, Steppenwolf, Iron Butterfly, Moby Grape, Pink Floyd, The Who, Jay & The Americans, Neil Diamond, Orpheus, New Colony Six, Lulu, The Intruders, Gene Pitney, Marvelettes, Four Seasons, Bobby Goldsmith, Jan & Dean, Barry & The Tamberlaines, Leslie Gore, Major Lance, Super Session, Guess Who,Tom Petty, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Seatrain, XTC, Joan Osborne, Byrds, Jackson Browne, Iain Matthews, Judy Collins and New Riders Of The Purple Sage.
David Bowie [mm:ss] a side: "Modern Love (Studio)" b side: "Modern Love (Live)" EMI America B-8177 1983 Almost like a promo single, but this style is studio on the a-side and live on the b-side. Listening to the studio version, I never realized how kind a lame those synth stabs in the verse are. Anywho the live side was recorded on the Serious Moonlight tour on it's stop in Montreal. Larry Bright [mm:ss] a side: "Mojo Workout" b side: "I'll Change My Ways" Tide 45-T-006 1960 Your keto's got nothin' on my mojo. Also, if anyone has a copy of Bobby Long & the Satellites "Mo Jo Workout" that's VG or better, feel free to send me a copy ;) The Flying Lizards [mm:ss] a side: "Money" b side: "Money B" Virgin Records VA 67003 1979 Prexactly. The mighty fine new wave version of the Berry Goldie hit. And getting all dubby on the b-side. Bay City Rollers [mm:ss] a side: "Money Honey" b side: "Maryanne" Arista Records AS 170 1976 Very riffy single from the tartan patterned lads. Speaking of riffs, how about the Brian May-esque riff on the flipside? The Rebbels [mm:ss] a side: "Monkey Monkey" b side: "Come Back" Bellaphon 1030 1966 Fun for the whole family! A fun single from Germany. Dave and Ansil Collins [mm:ss] a side: "Monkey Spanner" b side: "Double Barrel" Big Tree Records BT-10526 1970* The nutsiest sound around. A reissue from Atlantic Oldies. Major Lance [mm:ss] a side: "The Monkey Time" b side: "Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um" Epic Records 15-2221 1963/1972 Whoops, flipped that one around, but you know where my priorities are. Mighty fine Curtis Mayfield tune. Fun fact: The current mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms is the daughter of Major Lance and Sylvia Robinson. The Chimptations [mm:ss] a side: "Monkeyshines" b side: "I Go Ape" Ramo Records RAMO 105 2014 WFMU's master of monkey mayhem Dave the Spazz (http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/MS) brings us this smash hit with Neil Sedaka b-side. I do indeed go ape for this single. Music Behind the DJ: "Planet of the Apes (Main Title)" by Jerry Goldsmith.
This week's episode is a continuation of last week's episode except this time we are going to take a deep dive into the history behind last week's song. this includes what studio the song was recorded at and in what city the song was recorded and the other record labels and artists that were heavily evolved in that city and how it shaped soul music and the important people behind that. in this episode you'll also learn how the writer of last week's song heavily influenced another world renown artist that most people are familiar with. here's a link to last week's song just in case you wanted to listen to it again:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g02WmLzozs8You can Also follow me On Instagram right here:https://www.instagram.com/iheartoldies/You can also check out more of my original music right here:http://www.samwilliamsmusic.netAlso please don't forget to check out my Redbubble Merch store for this podcast. if you decide to buy something from it and you get it in the mail, let me know and email me at samltwilli@icloud.com with a picture of that item and a few sentences telling me how much you love my show!:https://www.redbubble.com/people/60ssam95/works/36806158-keep-things-groovy?asc=u&ref=recent-ownerIf you learned some really cool facts about this artist and song and you never knew about Major Lance or Curtis Mayfield or Chicago Soul, please email me at samltwilli@icloud.com
This week's podcast episode is going to be on a very underrated black Soul singer from the 60's, and no he is not Sam Cooke or Otis Redding or Marvin Gaye or James Brown, he is somebody that you probably have never heard of before but I firmly believe that he was one of the greatest R&B singers of his time, and in this week's episode I'm going to break down his second biggest hit that was a personal favorite mine and show you guys what makes the song so good and so infections and just downright phenomenal. Next week's episode is going to be on the history behind this track and in that episode I will talk about who wrote the song and who produced it and what studio the song was recorded at and the city that it was recorded in and the Soul Music Scene from that city and how it was influenced by other genres of soul music including Motown and Stax. here's a link to this week's song so you can listen to it so you can get a feel for what I'm talking about this week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g02WmLzozs8Don't forget to also follow me on Instagram right here:https://www.instagram.com/iheartoldies/You can also check out more of my original music right here:http://www.samwilliamsmusic.netDon't forget to also grab something from my Redbubble Podcast Merch Store. please let me know if you decide to get anything and you can do that by emailing me at samltwilli@icloud.com and sending me a picture of your item and your name and where are you from and how much you love my show and your favorite song that I have done so far fro it. I'd also love to hear your feedback on the pricing on each item if it's too expensive or if it's affordable to you. here's the store link:https://www.redbubble.com/people/60ssam95/works/36806158-keep-things-groovy?asc=u&ref=recent-ownerif you enjoyed my analysis and breakdown of this week's song and found it interesting and you fell in love with this particular song and artist and you've never hear of him before or have never heard this song before until you heard me break down this song and you heard this podcast, you can email me at samltwilli@icloud.com
We are away this week, but enjoy an episode from our first December in MFP! This week we are featuring music by Cherry Wainer & Don Storer, Major Lance, Chaka Demus & Pliers, Freda Payne, Hootie and the Blowfish, Morrissey, Arctic Monkeys, Paul McCartney, Beach Boys, Burt Bacharach, Bears, Phoenix, Joe Mensah and Beyonce! TWITTER: @MusicFirstPcast FACEBOOK: Music First Podcast INSTAGRAM: MusicFirstPodcast EMAIL: MusicFirstPodcast@gmail.com
It seems like every podcaster's wet dream is to score a big shot interviewee. It may be an internet marketing guru, a best selling self help author or even someone who's famous for being famous. Podcasting is all about social proof. Of course, I'm no different. I hosted internet marketing gurus, best selling authors and even one billionaire - founder of Priceline.com Today, however, is a different sort of show. I am hopeful it will inspire you, because I'm joined by Lance Sumner aka Major Sumner. Major is a long-time member of my VIP club. We first started working together when he was still trying to make sense of internet marketing. These days his name sparkles on the Digital Altitude leaderboards. Major is a biz opp "unicorn." He's what every internet marketing beginner aspires to be. He's the one guy who ACTUALLY MADE IT! His story will inspire you, because he not only didn't know how to start a business, but he also had to climb out of a deep hole while learning the ropes.
It seems like every podcaster’s wet dream is to score a big shot interviewee. It may be an internet marketing guru, a best selling self help author or even someone who’s famous for being famous. Podcasting is all about social proof. Of course, I’m no different. I hosted internet marketing gurus, best selling authors and even one billionaire - founder of Priceline.com Today, however, is a different sort of show. I am hopeful it will inspire you, because I’m joined by Lance Sumner aka Major Sumner. Major is a long-time member of my VIP club. We first started working together when he was still trying to make sense of internet marketing. These days his name sparkles on the Digital Altitude leaderboards. Major is a biz opp "unicorn." He’s what every internet marketing beginner aspires to be. He's the one guy who ACTUALLY MADE IT! His story will inspire you, because he not only didn't know how to start a business, but he also had to climb out of a deep hole while learning the ropes.
puntata numero 65..Svariati campionamenti, produzioni, mash up e remix compongono questa scaletta di Snippet, spaziando da Major Lance a Lauryn Hill, dai Beastie Boys ad Alborosie. Anche i generi musicali si alternano dinamicamente per far scoprire come ogni brano sia composto e interpretato con linguaggi differenti...oldies/ hip-hop/ dub /reggae/ ragga jungle
puntata numero 65..Svariati campionamenti, produzioni, mash up e remix compongono questa scaletta di Snippet, spaziando da Major Lance a Lauryn Hill, dai Beastie Boys ad Alborosie. Anche i generi musicali si alternano dinamicamente per far scoprire come ogni brano sia composto e interpretato con linguaggi differenti...oldies/ hip-hop/ dub /reggae/ ragga jungle
puntata numero 65..Svariati campionamenti, produzioni, mash up e remix compongono questa scaletta di Snippet, spaziando da Major Lance a Lauryn Hill, dai Beastie Boys ad Alborosie. Anche i generi musicali si alternano dinamicamente per far scoprire come ogni brano sia composto e interpretato con linguaggi differenti...oldies/ hip-hop/ dub /reggae/ ragga jungle
Episode 10! Feels kinda milestoney! Back to the gangster vintage soul. Ain't nothin' like it. Some classics, plus a few rarities. Tracklist: Executive Suite "I'm A Winner Now" The Impressions "I'm So Proud" The Mad Lads "Make Room" Archie Bell & The Drells "When You Left The Heartache Began" Nooney Rickett "Player, Play On" Wanda McDaniels "Gangster Boy" Universal Minds "A Chance at Love" Jackie Dee "Who" Sly & The Family Stone "Running Away" The Soul Attractions "I Forgot" Jorge Darden "Alone Again" Major Lance "Hey Little Girl" Ben Monroe "Broken Home"
New podcast this week with Cherry Wainer & Don Storer, Major Lance, Chaka Demus & Pliers, Freda Payne, Hootie and the Blowfish, Morrissey, Arctic Monkeys, Paul McCartney, Beach Boys, Burt Bacharach, Bears, Phoenix, Joe Mensah and Beyonce As always you can find us a few places: Itunes: http://bit.ly/Hg2RdK Facebook: http://on.fb.me/IzhiJV Email us at MusicFirstPodcast@gmail.com
New podcast this week with The Champs, Dave Burgess, Elvis Presley, Los Silvertones, Velvet Underground, Bee Gees, Elvis Costello, R.O.i.G, Rolling Stones, The Who, Major Harris, Major Lance, Joe Cuba, Pitbull, and Cee-Lo As always you can find us a few places: Itunes: http://bit.ly/Hg2RdK Facebook: http://on.fb.me/IzhiJV Email us at MusicFirstPodcast@gmail.com
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